


I'll Let You Be in My Dream if I Can Be in Yours

by Escapologist



Series: Happy Steve Bingo [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Actual Russian Natasha, Alternate Universe - High School, Art Student Steve, Artist Steve Rogers, Bucky finds steve, Bullying, Coming Out, Happy Ending, Happy Steve Bingo, Homophobic Language, Introspection, M/M, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Serious Illness, Sports dude Bucky, Steve finds himself, Steve is a fake-ass football fan, Teen Angst, Violence, everybody has vegan cupcakes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-08-30 02:08:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16755838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Escapologist/pseuds/Escapologist
Summary: High school's a tough time, and it's even tougher when you're a scrawny misfit with anger issues and an uncertain home life. But if Steve Rogers can be brave enough to channel his troubles into something productive, there's a chance he can survive high school hell, and leave it a better place than he found it.As if he didn't have enough on his plate, he's increasingly obsessing over the stupidly hot new star of the school football team. But, hey. What closeted teenage art student hasn't been inthoseshoes?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Never in a million years would I have attempted a high school AU if not for the Happy Steve Bingo, but worlds collided and here we are. My own school years are a long way in the past, and my whole concept of American high school life comes from TV shows and movies, so please forgive any inaccuracies and take this as a loving homage to the high school genre, complete with timeless tropes and the requisite mix of angst, heroism and schmaltz.
> 
> Happiness + Steve Rogers + high school is a tricky equation, so as the tags suggest this is not a fluff fest, but it does deliver Steve some well-deserved happiness in the end.
> 
> Would love to see you on [tumblr](https://escapologistldn.tumblr.com/)

Is anybody ever really happy in high school?

Steve wonders to himself he leans forward over the sink, pinching his nose tightly to try and stop the bleeding. His top lip has gone numb. In the grubby mirror above, he can see the puffy yellow beginnings of a black eye, the throb coalescing into a sharp pain on his cheekbone where the skin is broken. Man, he looks awful. Secretly he thinks it’s kinda cool, although his mom will definitely not share that view. Only a few weeks into the fall semester and this is already the second time. 

Sure, most people seem to have an easier ride of it than he does. But are they _happy?_ Do Paige Lorraine and her gang of preening airheads really feel as great about themselves as their Instagram feeds make out? Does Bruce Banner, the school genius, secretly wish he could be cool as well as smart? Would Brock fucking Rumlow really be such an irredeemable asshole if he was truly contented, deep in his soul?

Actually, fuck that guy. He’s the main reason Sarah Rogers loses so much sleep.

With his free hand, Steve runs the cold water to try and take the sting out of his knuckles. It doesn’t really work, but at least the drops of blood spattered around the sink swirl away down the drain.

He’s just prodding gingerly at his lip when something catches his eye in the mirror - a flash of red shirt at the door behind him. Shit! Someone’s coming in. Steve hunkers down over the sink and hopes the interloper will ignore him, but instead of going over to piss, or heading into the stall, the mystery feet come to a stop right in the middle of the bathroom. 

Fuck.

“Hey.”

Steve’s stomach drops through the floor. Oh, God, how can this be happening? There’s no mistaking that voice – it’s him. James Barnes. As in the quarterback of the school football team, James Barnes. As in, Brock Rumlow’s bosom fucking buddy, who, not five minutes earlier, had stood there by the dumpsters while his teammate threw his fist at Steve’s eye socket. As in—

Why? He’s been punched on two separate occasions today, and it’s still only lunchtime. Isn’t that enough? Can’t these guys just take a break?

Right now Steve would dearly love to disintegrate into a pile of dust. Since that’s not gonna happen, he screws his eyes shut and takes a deep breath, before shutting off the faucet and standing as straight as he can, back turned, nose clamped between his fingers.

“The fuck do you wad?”

The tough talk falls flat - it comes out all nasal and stupid-sounding. Barnes doesn’t laugh, though. In the mirror, Steve can see him hunched over with his hands in his pockets, looking down at the floor. Hardly threatening demeanour.

“Look, man,” he mumbles. “I just came to say… I’m sorry.”

“What?”

Steve whirls around, letting go of his nose, and fixes Barnes with a scowl. Barnes’s eyes widen in horror when he sees Steve’s face.

“Oh, _shit.”_

He reaches into the stall and grabs fistfuls of toilet paper, shoving them in Steve’s direction. He knows he looks like shit – he can still taste blood in his mouth, and there are a few drops on his Hold Steady shirt where his nose is starting to trickle again.

“Oh my God. Are you OK?”

“I’m fine.”

“God. I’m so sorry. Rumlow’s such a fucking asshole.”

“Yep.”

Jeez, what a guy. Even his best friends are prepared to badmouth him. 

Barnes tears off another handful of paper and holds it under the cold water, then holds it out to Steve, who snatches it out of his hand like a petulant child. This is so _humiliating_. Thank God his face is fucked up enough that Barnes won’t be able to notice how hard his cheeks are blazing.

He turns back to the mirror and dabs the wet tissue at the broken skin along his cheekbone, wincing in pain. Out of the corner of his eye he can see Barnes watching him. That… that _face_ is all pale and creased with concern. 

“No, look. Lemme. You gotta…”

He comes closer and takes the wadded tissue back. Steve doesn’t resist. What is he…? Oh, God, he’s actually going to…

Steve has a sudden, vivid flashback to the time he got put on really strong medication for a persistent chest infection and it made his heart all jittery. He’s rooted to the spot and his breathing goes all weird as Barnes reaches down and presses the makeshift poultice firmly against his aching face. The coldness of it makes him gasp.

“Hurts, huh?” Barnes says, in a soft voice.

“Ya think?” Steve retorts, on reflex. Maybe he slightly regrets the sharpness of his tone. Whatever. 

Barnes rolls his eyes. Soon the initial sting subsides, and a cool, soothing effect takes over. Steve holds the pad still himself so that Barnes will back off and give him some space to get his head around what the fuck is happening.

It’s too fucking weird. Maybe he got concussed and is hallucinating this whole thing. It definitely seems like Chester Phillips High School Quarterback James Barnes is leaning against the bathroom tiles and talking to him.

“Are you gonna tell anyone?”

“God. I’m not a snitch.” 

“He could get kicked out of school for this.”

Truly, from the flat tone of Barnes’s voice, Steve can’t tell whether the thinks this would be a good or a bad thing. Doesn’t matter, though. They both know it’s not gonna happen. He shrugs.

Barnes reaches out again and lifts the pad away from Steve’s cheek so he can peer closely at the damage. Steve’s chest does something weird, kind of like panicking.

“This is awful,” Barnes says. “I didn’t think he would actually—”

“He’s usually a little more subtle,” Steve replies. “Most of the time he hits me in places that don’t show.”

Barnes looks horrified. “Well, I guess you really got to him this time,” he says.

Steve can’t help it: a huge grin spreads across his face, even though his cheeks are aching.

“Yeah,” he says.

There’s a moment where Barnes grins back, and their eyes meet, and Steve feels even more disoriented that he did after getting punched. What is it that makes Barnes’s face so fascinating, like some beautiful accident of nature? Nobody would ever punch a face like that. 

“It’s just— D’you have to piss him off so much?” Barnes asks. “Are you trying to, like, prove something? I mean, do you _like_ getting your ass kicked?”

“Hey, I don’t start it!” Steve snaps, residual anger still floating in his system. “I’m just not gonna let him treat people like shit. And you shouldn’t either! S’fucking… _wrong!”_

Barnes pauses. He opens his mouth, then closes it again and looks away. Steve hastily resumes scowling.

“You gotta ice that,” Barnes says, waving his hand towards Steve’s face.

“Sure, lemme go to the school kitchens with blood on my shirt.”

Barnes straightens up and gives Steve a rueful, beautiful smile. He’s nearly a head taller than Steve and a lot stronger, although that’s not difficult. Some people really are blessed with all the good genes and others are not.

“I think it’s really cool that you stand up to him. You’re like, the only one who does.”

Something fizzes in the bottom of Steve’s stomach. He wonders if he might be about to throw up.

“Someone’s gotta,” he mutters. “Can’t let the assholes win.”

Barnes doesn’t reply, but Steve can feel his eyes on him. The atmosphere in the bathroom suddenly feels overwhelmingly awkward. He stands up straight, returning Barnes’s gaze.

Barnes’s eyes widen. “OK,” he says, hurriedly, “I gotta go.”

Steve just nods, dumbly, and watches him leave. As Barnes reaches the door, he turns again.

“Hey, Rogers.”

“What?” 

“I’m sorry for… Sorry he called you, y’know. A fag.”

Steve’s gut twists. He narrows his eyes at Barnes, this good-looking, straight-A sports star, right at the top of the high school food chain. Why is he specifically apologising for _that?_ Right, of course. Because to some people, gay is the worst thing you can call someone. The worst thing you can _be_. Blood pumps in his ears and something in him snaps. 

“Why?” he asks, folding his arms across his chest. “He’s right.”

The second it’s out Steve can’t believe he said it. His words were meant to sting, or at least provoke a little revulsion in Barnes, and show that despite today’s weird episode, he’s just another Rumlow thug. But it doesn’t quite work. Barnes just raises both eyebrows and blinks.

“OK,” he says. And then he’s gone.

What the fuck…?

Steve returns to the sink and splashes water in his face. It’s a good few minutes before the adrenaline subsides, but eventually, he pulls himself upright and looks back at his reflection again. Lank blond hair falls across his face, half-covering one of his blue eyes. Water clings to his eyelashes in droplets. His skin is blotchy, there’s still blood caked around one nostril and the side of his eye is starting to bruise in earnest. God, he really looks like shit. Gently, he brings his fingers up to the tender spot below his eye where Barnes pressed down with a wad of wet toilet paper.

What just happened? Did he really just come out for only the second time? To _James Barnes???_

Shit. Talk about a dumb move. Rumlow’s never gonna leave him alone after this.

*

“Steve.”

Steve comes round with a start, blinking at Mr Erskine in confusion. He’s been staring at his painting for God knows how long, so deep in thought that he hasn’t heard the bell, or the other students packing up around him. 

Wow, maybe he got hit harder than he thought.

“Just… wait behind for a moment, please.”

Steve gives him a curt nod, and scowls to himself. The last thing he needs is to get into more trouble when he should be heading home. He packs up slowly and loiters by Erskine’s desk, waiting for everybody else to disappear. 

If only he could get to the bottom of whatever the hell happened in the boys’ bathroom at lunch. When James fucking Barnes appeared, like a penitent angel, and spoke to him, used his _name_ , and soothed his sore eye. Steve can’t stop replaying the whole scene from start to finish, alternately cringing and glowing. It’s the weirdest fucking thing ever.

Eventually the room empties, and Erskine turns to Steve, pushing his glasses up his nose. He’s not exactly smiling, but his eyes are as warm and kindly as they have been since freshman year. For a moment or two they eyeball each other: Erskine all friendly and approachable, and Steve countering with a defiant stare.

“Is everything alright?” Erskine asks, finally, tapping the skin below his own left eye.

“Oh. Yeah.” Steve’s face still aches, but he’d already forgotten how it looks. He cleaned himself up pretty good and turned his shirt inside out, but the bruising probably looks even worse by now. “I, um. I was walking past a ball game. Bad luck I guess.”

Erskine nods, then strokes his chin.

“Yes, you do seem to suffer from bad luck. I should tell you, if your fortunes don’t improve, the school will investigate.” 

His soft German lilt has a calming effect, whether Steve wants to calm down or not. He looks at his shoes, suddenly embarrassed by the teacher’s kindness. The last thing he wants is to be the centre of an investigation. Maybe he should be more careful.

“It has been a while since we talked,” Erskine goes on. “Things are OK at home?”

“Fine,” Steve answers, a little too quickly. 

Erskine gives him a long look.

“Alright,” he says. “Well. I have been meaning to ask you about your work.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Steve bites back. Anxiety starts to twist at his insides. He just needs something to go right for a change. Out of everything, he’s probably worked hardest of all on his artwork this semester, and he’s sure he’s turned everything in on time. 

“Nothing’s wrong,” Erskine replies, in that calm, almost amused voice. “It’s good.”

Steve’s frown deepens. “Oh,” he says, flatly.

“Everything you have produced this year has been good,” Erskine goes on. “However. The problem, I think, is… that you are _better_ than good.”

“I… oh,” said Steve, again, wrongfooted half way through his sentence. “I mean, I’m doing my—"

“Landscapes, figures, still-lives, all good, good, good.” Erskine says, waving a hand in circles. “But. I am not seeing _you_ in them. For some time now.”

Now Steve is completely lost.

“What, you want me to do some self-portraits?”

Erskine smiles.

“In a manner of speaking,” he says. “Come and look.”

He beckons Steve over to his laptop and brings up a folder containing images of Steve’s work. As he double-clicks on it, Steve’s stomach turns over. There’s a series of sketches of his mother, drawn during better times. He remembers paying careful attention to each line on her face, trying to capture her spirit as well as her looks.

“Look,” Erskine says. “These portraits you made last year are so _honest_. This is beautiful work, Steve. And what happened to the artist who made _this_ piece?”

He pauses on Steve’s one and only experiment with abstraction: a mess of dark, angry, black lines, red flecks and murky green splodges, and a large, blank space in the corner where he scratched his initials, SGR. It stirs something so acute in Steve that he can barely look at it.

He clenches his teeth. “I didn’t wanna go that way,” he says.

“Then don’t,” Erskine replies. “But do you see what I mean? Even a year ago, there was so much more of you in the pictures. I just wondered what happened.”

Steve doesn’t answer, because he knows exactly what happened. He thinks about his sketch books at home and almost wants to laugh.

Erskine closes the computer and leans back in his chair.

“Why am I asking you this?” he says. “I suppose I am wondering, what do you want? Are you still thinking about art school?”

In Erskine’s accent it sounds like ‘sinking about art school’, which sounds about right to Steve. He fixes his gaze on the wall behind Erskine.

“I dunno,” he says. “My mom thinks I should aim to major in, like, accounting, or politics, or, y’know, something that might actually help me earn a living.”

“Ah,” Erskine nods. “Well. There’s living, and there’s _living_. It’s your choice, of course. I’m sure you have great aptitude for accounting. But I would be letting you down if I didn’t tell you that you have great potential in art. In fact, I think you could be scholarship material.”

Steve blinks. “Really?”

“Yes. I think so.”

Steve blinks again. Studying art had been a dream he’d slowly let go of over the last year. Honestly, he hasn’t been thinking seriously about college at all lately. It seems so impossible to see beyond the end of the year, even.

He wonders if James Barnes is gonna go to college.

“If you want to,” Erskine goes on. “If you have the passion. And I think you do. You are… angrier now than you used to be, I think.”

Steve blinks. “I dunno,” he says. “I mean, it would be great. Part of me would love that. But I… I want to… look, it sounds dumb.”

Erskine raises a sceptical eyebrow and waits for Steve to elaborate.

“I want to make a difference in the world. Be part of positive change, you know?”

Erskine nods.

“And you think art does not do that.” 

Steve frowns, realising he maybe not have thought the assumption through.

“I… well, I mean, not like activism. Or advocacy. Or, like teaching, I guess.”

Erskine gives him a benevolent look, like someone who has had this conversation before.

“If art is not a subversive force, then why do oppressors hate it, or try to control it?” he says. “Why did Hitler burn the paintings of my grandfather’s peers? Why did he murder artists or send them into exile?”

“Yeah, but it’s not like that _now_ ,” Steve argues.

“Hmm. In the USA, perhaps not so much,” Erskine says. “But you don’t have to risk your life to have an impact. Art can inspire, inform, interrogate, comfort. It can help society talk about difficult things it would rather avoid. It can be very powerful. But it must _tell the truth_.”

Steve is momentarily lost for words. There’s a weird sort of excitement in his chest, something he hasn’t felt in a long time. 

“And,” Erskine continues, peering over the top of his funny round glasses. “Even more than that, it is a way for the artist to make sense of himself.” 

It’s kind of embarrassing, but Steve’s arms are prickling with goosebumps. Maybe there is hope for a way through the shitstorm after all. He pauses for a while, then shifts his bag on his shoulder and looks Erskine straight in the eye.

“So what do you want me to do?” he asks.

The teacher smiles broadly back at him, his eyes dancing with mischief.

“Throw away the photos for a while,” he says. “Draw from direct observation. Real life. Paint what you _feel_.”

“I’m not sure the school wants to see that,” Steve says, with a wry smile. It gets a chuckle out of Erskine.

“I’m not asking you to be a model student,” he replies. “I’m asking you to let yourself be what you are.” He jabs a finger at Steve’s chest. “A. Good. Artist.”

*

It’s pretty dark when Steve finally gets out of school. No headphones for the walk home – his head is buzzing loudly with the day’s encounters, and he needs to tune into it. James Barnes and Erskine have really got under his skin.

It’s true, what Erskine said, and Steve knows it. While he has been working his ass off on his painting technique, he’s taken himself right out of the picture. He’s sucked the feelings out of his artwork and thrown them all into facing off with people like fucking Brock Rumlow. 

Why’s that? What’s he feeling that’s so unpaintable? It’s uncomfortable to think about it, but he’s gonna have to if he’s serious about trying for art school.

So yeah, he’s angry. He always has been. Why wouldn’t he be? He’s small and sickly and he lives in a world that shits on anybody who doesn’t have the good luck to be born privileged. But something’s changed in the past year. His anger has intensified to the point where it keeps getting him into trouble, and he doesn’t really want to think about why. 

_Tell the truth_ , Erskine had said. Well, Steve Rogers doesn’t back down from challenges.

A chilly breeze makes him shiver and his breath rattles in his chest. It’s only mid-September, but it’s getting cold early in New York this year. The sky between the buildings looks grey and dreary as fall sets in. The city keeps moving around him, distant and uncaring, while Steve listens to his gut, and hears what he already knew deep down: he’s scared.

Immediately he starts arguing. So what? He’s been scared before, and he’s never given in to it. Yeah, Rumlow is pretty intimidating, and getting punched hurts like hell, but Steve can take it. He’s keeping it together. He’s being brave, right? Calling out Rumlow every time he picks on somebody is the opposite of cowardly. It’s taking a stand.

But his gut answers back. There’s more to this, isn’t there?

Steve keeps walking, head down. Looks like it might start to rain and his jacket is definitely not waterproof.

It’s never long before his thoughts circle back to James Barnes. _James Barnes_. Even the sound of his name sets off a chemical reaction in Steve. What the fuck was that weird dream sequence in the school bathroom? It loops around his head like a dumb viral video. Obsessing over Barnes is not new, but he still can’t believe they have actually _talked_. And everything about it was just…

 _Are you, like, trying to prove something?_ Barnes had said. Is that it? OK, maybe, yeah. Maybe he wants to prove that even a scrawny weirdo like him can do something important. And it _is_ important, not to let hateful shit happen without doing something about it. 

Is he handling it the right way? Possibly not. The school’s not gonna do shit about Rumlow, but people like Erskine are starting to notice, and he doesn’t want anyone nosing around and asking him questions. Maybe he should try to cool it a little, quit stirring up so much trouble. 

Ha. Like that would just magically make everything OK.

His footsteps have slowed the closer he’s gotten to his apartment building, and now he’s almost at a standstill, dawdling on the sidewalk. If he looks, he can see his apartment window from here.

Come on, Steve.

He looks. The window’s dark.

Steve stares queasily for a moment. He takes a few more slow steps, then sits down on a low wall outside his building. Usually he fights this feeling off, but today it creeps coldly over him until he can’t ignore it anymore and he admits to himself that he’s not just scared, he’s terrified. Not just by Brock Rumlow. He’s frightened of who he is, and of what might happen to him.

 _Paint what you feel_ , Erskine said. He rubs at his knees and takes a few long, shaky breaths, waiting for the fear to peak so it can subside again. Fuck. Is this what he’s gotta do? No wonder he hasn’t been painting this shit.

But… imagine spending four years studying art. He’s not gonna just, like, let all his bullshit, or Rumlow, or anything else get in the way of that. He’s gonna get to the bottom of it.

 _Tell the truth_ , Erskine said. So what’s the truth? Steve stares down at his hands. Even if he could push aside the James Barnes issue, which he certainly cannot, he there is still a world of discomfort to wade through.

The truth is… that Brock Rumlow is a fucking bully who needs to be challenged.

Like, duh. Try again.

The truth is that you can’t wait for other people to do the right thing. You have to do it yourself.

And the rest. Come on.

OK.

The truth is that it’s easier to get in Rumlow’s face and get knocked on his ass ten times out of ten than face up to his shitty fucking reality. At least it’s pain he can choose.

So there it is. 

Steve exhales. On the next breath, he raises his head and squares his shoulders. Brock Rumlow might think he’s weak, but that’s a fucking joke. He knows what he’s got to do. Time to face facts. 

The apartment is quiet when he gets up the stairs, and it’s just as dark as it seemed from the street. Shit. He’s way later home than he intended.

He drops his bag next to the door.

“Mom?”

No answer. Her shoes and coat are there, though, so she must be asleep. Steve wanders through to the kitchen and makes two sandwiches: one for himself, and one for Sarah, in case she wakes up. Then he does his homework and, gets out his paints, and begins.

*

He’s gonna need the big brush for this. It doesn’t have to be any good, it just has to _be_. Just has to be something he can work with. 

Steve thinks about the old piece Erskine showed him, the one he did in class the day after they got the news. It’s a start, but it’s kinda childish. The black is too obvious. 

He mixes a dark, bruised purple and starts from there. The brush flies fast and careless, dipping and mixing, conjuring up a raging orange and an aggressive, shameless pink. There’s a murky green that feels right, and the odd dash of Chester Phillips High School football red.

In his head he goes back to Brock Rumlow, and lets his mind wander from there. The brush follows, frustration and powerlessness rolling out of him in harsh, messy lines and contrasting shapes. There’s gonna be too much for one canvas but that’s OK, he can always do more.

Before he knows it, he’s covered more than half of the canvas. A blank space yawns off to the side, glaring and sterile, ignoring the chaos around it. Right in the middle is where Steve daubs his initials.

Then he starts another.


	2. Chapter 2

What the fuck is Steve doing here? Is there nothing else he could be doing with his Friday nights?  
He’s not even that sold on school spirit, let alone sports of any kind, and he sticks out on the bleachers like some straight-edge emo kid at a keg party. But he turns up, game after game, and tries to blend into the cheering crowds.

Then the players walk out onto the field, and Steve catches sight of the number 10, and his stomach somersaults. He knows exactly what he’s doing here.

To be fair a lot of the guys on the team are hot, but James Barnes is in his own league. It’s not just the way those game pants cling, it’s the edge of vulnerability in his smile, when he salutes the crowd. Steve likes to think that he’s the only one who sees it. That he has a unique line of sight to the _real_ James Barnes, a guy who happens to have a talent for sports, but who doesn’t truly belong in Rumlow’s crew of moronic jocks.

Huh. Who’s he kidding? It’s probably all just projection, because he wishes that somehow he could be as significant for Barnes as Barnes is for him. 

Steve is used to being different, of course. He’s always stuck out from the crowd. The Kid whose Dad Died. The Sick Kid who was always in hospital. The Smallest Kid in the Class. The Loner Kid with no friends. The Angry Kid, who argued and got into trouble. At this point, being the oddball is standard for him. 

But during his junior year, the oddball thing stopped being a point of pride and morphed into a full-on nightmare. He woke up one day to find he was now also the Kid with the Really Sick Mom. 

And as if that wasn’t enough, the first day back after the Christmas break, another crisis hit. He was minding his own business in history class when in strolled James fucking Barnes, freshly transferred from Shelby, Indiana, and all of Steve’s most nebulous feelings and late-night longings snapped into lightning-sharp relief as his jaw hit the floor. 

Great. That was just fucking great. On top of everything else, he was now officially confirmed the Gay Kid. 

Steve sighs and rubs his eyes. It really shouldn’t be that big of a deal. He knows it’s nothing to be ashamed of, and he’s not. It’s just… really? This as well? Nobody’s really out and proud at Chester Phillips: it’s more like something you hear about later, after they’ve moved on from the identity crisis years and are no longer forced to share their space with unforgiving teens. Something for Steve to worry about later, when he can muster the emotional energy.

Until then, here he is, skulking alone in the bleachers on a Friday night: the Kid who Turns Up to Every School Football Game to Pine Over his Unobtainable Crush.

It’s easy to stare at Barnes here, where all eyes are on him. Steve’s dimly aware that other people are on the field, too: Brock Rumlow, for example, throwing himself around like a wrecking ball, shrugging off the penalties that come his way. But Steve only cares about the quarterback.

Coach Pierce might try to take the credit, but it’s pretty clear to Steve that Chester Phillips’ winning streak has everything to do with James Barnes. You don’t need a grasp of football tactics to see how gifted the guy is. He’s got that magic combination of strength, grace and perception, somehow playing a part in every point the school scores. 

How can this _star_ , who can’t move without making the crowd go nuts, be the same James Barnes from last week? The one who found Steve all busted up in the school bathroom, and balled up some tissue and held it gently to his broken face, like he knew how it felt? Who caught Steve’s private confession and held onto it without judgement?

Steve’s mind starts to wander over familiar ground and he replays the bathroom incident for the millionth time. When he gets to the part where Barnes says sorry for Rumlow calling him a fag, he imagines a different ending. Steve still says yeah, he’s right about that, but Bucky doesn’t just say OK and leave. He says, oh. And then he says, wow. And then he says, hey, me too. And they kind of laugh at each other, embarrassed and breathless, and Steve says, really? 

And then Barnes kind of comes towards him and says, yeah, I never told anyone though. And Steve’s like, sure, it can stay between us. And then they exchange this meaningful look, and Barnes licks his lips, and Steve says well, you’ve probably heard this a lot, but let me be the first guy to tell you how unbelievably hot you are. And Barnes’s eyes widen in wonder, and he says something like, God, Steve, it’s so fucking cool how you just don’t give a fuck, I’ve been thinking about you for months, and then they just start making out and it all gets various levels of dirty until Steve has to snap back to reality.

But even in reality, in the coldest reality of all, where Barnes is excelling on the football field and Steve is lurking in the stands, it’s clear that Steve isn’t completely wrong about him. Barnes may be a jock but he’s no brute. He’s nothing like Rumlow. He’s the type to check on his teammate after a rough tackle, shake hands, slap backs, applaud.

Chester Phillips is ahead but the end of the first quarter, and the crowd is so hyped that Steve gets over himself pretty quick: he’s on his feet and yelling with the rest of them, swept along on a wave of optimism. He even stops sneering at Paige Lorraine’s cheerleading squad for long enough to admit that they’re actually pretty hot shit.

But Barnes is, too. He’s a goddamn showman. The win is already in the bag for Chester Phillips, but in the dying seconds, Barnes spots an opening and hurls the ball almost half the length of the field. Steve’s heart is in his mouth as it arcs through the air like it’s guided by lasers, straight into the arms of some unmarked guy at the far end who sprints over the line before anyone can reach him. 

The CPH fans leap to their feet as one. Steve punches the air like a genuine sports fan and not just some lovelorn perv, and Paige and the girls get to strut their stuff again. It sends everybody home on a high. 

Some people are just lucky, Steve thinks. Some people make success look so fucking effortless. If anybody actually manages to be happy in high school, surely it’s James Barnes.

Steve lingers on the bleachers until most people have drifted away. When he finally makes his way out of the ground, the players are already starting to spill out into the October night. He crosses to the shadowy side of the street just in time to spot James Barnes leaving the locker room. 

For maybe five whole seconds, Steve imagines that he and Barnes head off in the same direction. They fall into step together, and then into conversation. Find some unexpected common ground. Maybe laugh together. 

But Steve, of all people, should know that the real world is cruel. A blonde ponytail comes sidling out of the shadows and before his eyes, Paige fucking Lorraine slips her arm through Barnes’s. Fucking… _giggling_ at him. 

It’s absolutely dumb as fuck, but Steve knows what a blow to the stomach feels like, and that’s how he feels right now. Of course. What could be more fucking predictable? 

Ah, well, he sighs. A guy can daydream.

*

Now that he thinks about it, James Barnes was actually the _first_ person Steve came out to, of his own volition. Natasha Romanov knows, but that’s because she worked it out, not because he told her.

She’d only been at Chester Phillips for two weeks when she came up behind him after English class and said, “So. You like boys.”

“What?” Steve had said, like he hadn’t spent the whole class trying not to watch the pattern of light and shadows on James Barnes’s jawline and fathom the shape of his mouth.

“I am wrong?”

Her arms were crossed, and there was a playful smile on her face. Steve loved her unashamedly thick accent. Maybe because she was an oddball and a loner like him, she made him feel safe. Or possibly extra reckless. He took a deep breath.

“You’re not wrong,” he replied, “Just a little… blunt.”

Natasha beamed.

“I’m Russian,” she said. “We prefer to be direct.”

Since then, she sometimes appears beside him and points out cute guys for the two of them to ‘fight over,’ as if she understands instinctively that his cause is a lost one. Steve thinks she might be his friend, but she comes and goes. She’s not the type you eat lunch with. That day that he got the black eye, though, as he was heading out of school, he saw Brock Rumlow, all puce in the face and cursing and kicking lockers in his socks because somebody took his fancy-ass new sneakers from the locker room.

When Steve got outside he saw Natasha across the street, her black leather jacket and shock of red hair cutting a very noticeable figure. She glanced upward and gave him this theatrical wink before turning on her heel, and when he followed the line of her gaze with his eyes, there was this pair of box-fresh two hundred-dollar sneakers, their laces knotted together, dangling from the top of a very high lamp post.

*

The store is all out of ginger tea, and it’s the only thing that settles Sarah’s stomach, so Steve walks a few blocks to another store to look for some. It’s not until he’s almost at the counter that he looks up and recognises the figure sitting behind it, and his stomach flips like a pancake. What is the universe trying to pull here, bringing him into the path of James Barnes’s Saturday job? 

Thankfully Barnes is looking in another direction, so Steve has a second to compose himself. It’s too late to bolt: he’s just gonna have to go ahead and buy the fucking tea. No big deal.

He fumbles the box, but tries to make out like he dropped it on the counter on purpose. Barnes turns around, clocks Steve, and hits him with a wide smile, like when you open the curtains on a Sunday and realise you’ve been missing out on the most beautiful day of the year.

“Hey, Steve!”

Woah.

With great effort, Steve pulls himself together.

“Hey, Barnes,” he replies. Shit, his voice sounds so weird.

“How’s it going?”

“Oh, you know. Another awesome weekend of chores and study.”

Barnes laughs, even though Steve’s line was not exactly a classic. Oh, God, he’s really charming and polite, even to angry loser nerds. Great customer service skills, Barnes. 

Now that he has a good excuse, Steve lets his eyes linger. The light’s not so good in the store, but it’s still obvious how Barnes’s cheekbones form perfect angles with his jawline. God, that cleft in his chin – could Steve ever manage to do it justice?

Don’t stare.

“Hey, were you at the game Friday?”

He asks like it’s an innocent question, but it makes Steve freeze, paralysed with all the possible meanings of it. Did… Did Barnes _see_ him there, drooling in the bleachers like some creep? Or is he just being friendly? A lot of people do go to the games. It’s a reasonable thing to wonder. Fuck.

Anyway. The only way out is through.

“Yeah,” he says. “We fucking killed it.”

Barnes nods and smiles. The way his mouth curls has this very slight cockiness to it, and Steve is just a goner for it: he doesn’t want to admit how much time he’s spent thinking about those lips instead of sleeping. 

“I thought I mighta seen you,” he says. “Didn’t have you pegged for a football fan.”

“Why not?” Steve retorts, colour rising in his cheeks. “Um, I mean, who isn’t? When we’re winning, anyway.”

That one seems to tickle Barnes. “Fuckin’ A,” he says, picking up the tea and waving it at the scanner. “Uh, three ninety-nine, please.”

Woah, no, this can’t be over? Steve glances around while he rummages in his wallet. There’s no-one else in the store right now, and this might be the last chance he ever gets to actually talk to James Barnes.

“You had a great game, huh?” he blurts, handing over the cash.

Anyone would say that, right? That’s a normal comment? Still, Barnes looks delighted as he opens the till and hands Steve his change. The bridge of his nose is kinda wide and flat – sports injury? – but his eyes are perfect almonds. A really beautiful pale shade of blue. The line of his eyelid extends into creases at the corners, which curve upwards in little flicks to meet the ends of his eyebrows.

“Yeah, the team’s really strong,” he says, “I got lucky when I came to CPH.”

“We’re the lucky ones,” Steve says. Fuck, looks like there’s no stopping him now. “That last touchdown was fucking sweet.”

Barnes’s face cracks into a full grin at that, and somehow it weakens Steve even more. His eyes scrunch up and he shows these adorable pointy canines that make him look younger, like an enthusiastic kid rather than the suave 17-year-old swooned over by every girl in Chester Phillips High. 

“Thanks, man,” he says. “You don’t get a shot like that very often.”

There’s a pause, during which Steve realises he’s grinning back at him, and quickly scrabbles around for more conversation. The store is still empty. There must be something he can say that doesn’t make him sound like a psycho.

Thankfully, Barnes keeps talking.

“Your face looks better.”

“No thanks to your buddy Rumlow.”

Barnes stops grinning. His face falls so far that Steve feels kinda bad about bringing it up. He’s not great at thinking things through before he says them. 

“Ugh,” Barnes says. He makes the same expression he wore when he came into the bathroom that day – regret and shame. “He’s not—I mean, you know Coach Pierce is his Uncle, right?”

As someone who completely ignored sports in every form until his interest was piqued by the hot new quarterback, Steve did not in fact know this. He frowns.

“Yeah. I mean, Rumlow would be on the team regardless, because unfortunately, he’s a good player. But the fucked up thing is that Pierce _listens_ to him. And you know how much of an asshole that guy is.”

Steve nods, with a you’re-telling-me grimace. 

“I just… I mean, it would suck a _lot_ if I got kicked off the team.”

“Oh. Right.” 

Things fall into place. Barnes’s belated apology, his hangdog expression while Rumlow yelled at Steve. His genuine shock when the threats turned to actual violence. Steve KNEW Barnes wasn’t like Rumlow and Rollins and the rest, but the idea of that meat-headed psychopath having any kind of say over Barnes’s place on the team, when he’s _obviously_ the most talented player they have, makes him rage with injustice.

The disgust must show on his face, because Barnes starts to apologise again.

“I mean, it’s my only shot at getting to college,” he says.

“Why’s that? You’re totally smart enough.” 

Jesus, Steve, stop with the fucking compliments.

Barnes shrugs. “I sure ain’t rich enough,” he says, gesturing at his location behind the counter of a grocery store.

“Tell me about it,” Steve says. 

So, Barnes is going for football scholarships. Makes sense. Erskine’s line about ‘scholarship material’ pops back into his head.

“Where do you wanna go?” he asks.

“I’ve been talking to Columbia,” Barnes replies. “They’re gonna come watch me, I think.”

“Holy shit, that’s amazing!” 

“Yeah, I’m still freaking out a little. Like, their team kinda sucks? But I figure that’s probably good news for me? I mean, it’s not like I’m aiming for the NFL. I just wanna stay in New York, and study, and play some football, you know?”

Steve can only nod. With his mom’s health so uncertain, he can’t imagine leaving either, and his heart flutters with childish happiness at the thought of the two of them being in the same city for the next four years. 

Barnes turns his head to acknowledge another customer milling around the store, showing Steve his profile. Amazing how it’s so much softer than the square-jawed silhouette when he’s face-on. 

“How about you?”

“Um, actually, I’m, uh, kinda thinking about art school,” Steve says. 

For some reason his cheeks choose this moment to flush. Barnes’s face lights up again at his words, and Steve wonders if that smile has ever actually killed anyone.

“Really? That’s awesome, man! Wow, I’d love to be able to draw.”

“If I can get my shit together, that is,” Steve mumbles, combing his fingers through the long sweep of hair that hangs in his face. The other customer has appeared at the counter, and Steve’s not sure whether he’s relieved or annoyed to be usurped.

“I hear ya,” Barnes says. “Sorry, I just gotta…”

“Oh. Yeah. Of course.” 

It’s over. The bubble has burst. Barnes’s attention is on someone else now, and if Steve tries to hang around and keep talking shit, it’s just gonna look too weird. He turns to leave. 

“See you ‘round,” he says, over his shoulder.

Barnes gives him a brief nod, and goes back to work. 

*

Steve floats all the way home, smiling giddily to himself. Barnes is so _cool_. And Steve chatted to him convincingly about sports! He’s itching to draw, and he grabs his sketchbook and pencils as soon as he’s finished making the tea.  
That’s twice now he’s been up close with James Barnes and basked in his attention. Two precious opportunities to watch his changing facial expressions and commit every detail to memory. It takes him forever to get the jawline and the nose right, but once he has them down, he just keeps going.   
Hours later he’s filled at least half a dozen pages. Jeez, why don’t you just draw your initials and his inside a fucking heart, loser.

God, Steve would die of mortification if anybody ever found this book. Some of the sketches aren’t at all bad though. Turns out that inspiration is key.

He stays up way too late drawing. When he gets to bed it’s after midnight, but his mind’s still spinning with images of James Barnes. He thinks back to the conversation in the store, and this time, Barnes says something like, “God, Steve, I can’t believe you’re into football as well. Could you be any more perfect?” And he replies with something like, “I’ll show you perfect,” and they break off from kissing long enough for Barnes to lock the door, and, well, things go from there.

*

“So, what do they want, then? The art school people?”

Erskine beams at him.

“Well, you have to look at the individual institutions, but the usual requirement is for around twenty pieces,” he says. “The best approach is to produce more, so you can chose the best ones. Shall we take a look?”

Steve joins him at the laptop, and Erskine types in the name of a school in New York.

“School of Visual Arts? No way.”

Erskine shrugs. “I thought you were a brave man,” he says.

He navigates to the undergrad fine arts page, and together they browse through some of the elective courses. As he runs his eye down the list, Steve’s skin prickles with excitement. Art and Activism. Designing the Future. Ecoventions: Your Art Can Change the World. Social Practice and Community Engagement. Fuck, imagine that.

“Can we see how you apply?”

Erskine was right: the portfolio is 20 pieces. Steve scans the application advice. There’s some talk of skills, abilities and potential. Individual unique background and experiences. Already a few ideas are forming in his mind, although most of them are not comfortable to think about. He’s gonna have to give this everything he’s got.

“So how am I going to beat the competition?” Steve asks. He’s kind of talking to himself, but he says it out loud. Erskine chuckles.

“Show them who you are,” he says. “You hardly need help to stand out from the crowd, Steve. But don’t focus on that. Start with yourself.”

OK then. Steve walks out of the art room feeling more like himself than he has in a long time. He still has to talk to his mom, but he can pick his moment. Something has shifted, and he’s determined now.

Back at home, he hauls out the cranky old laptop and starts to browse. School of Visual Arts, check. New York University. Hunter. Columbia. Include observational work, life drawings, show your major interest, demonstrate your creative thinking and your unique artistic vision. A personal statement. References. File by January 5. File by February 1. It’s getting into October now, so that gives him about three months.

He can do this.


	3. Chapter 3

“Hey, Parker!”

Steve’s optimistic mood lasts almost a whole 24 hours, until he rounds a corner in school the next day just in time to catch Rumlow heckling a wide-eyed, skinny-looking sophomore in the hall. Barnes isn’t with him, just this other football jerk named Jack Rollins.

“Was that your aunt who picked you up yesterday? Damn, she is fuckin’… she is _smokin’_ hot.”

Jesus, why does he have to be so fucking disgusting? Almost unconsciously, Steve gathers pace in Rumlow’s direction. From where he’s standing, Parker looks like he wants to climb inside his locker and never come out.

“What?” Rumlow says. His buddy Rollins is lurking next to him, sniggering. “I’m just sayin’, I would fuck her. That’s all I’m sayin’.”

He turns to Rollins.

“Parker is a lucky motherfucker, am I right? Whaddya call a MILF when it’s like, it’s not a mom, but it’s your aunt?”

He turns his attention back to Parker, who looks absolutely stricken. He’s desperately trying to fumble his books into his bag so he can escape, but he keeps dropping them.

“Hey, Parker, you ever, like, ‘accidentally’ walk in on her in the shower? For, like, jerk-off inspiration?”

“Man, I’d put a fucking camera in there,” grunts Rollins. 

Steve’s pulse thuds in his ears, his delicate fingers curling into fists as he accelerates down the hall towards them. Rumlow hasn’t seen him yet.

“You know, Parker, you must be so fucking glad your parents died. Because now you get to jerk off to that fine-ass Aunt any day you want.”

The worst thing is, to Rumlow, this is just some throwaway line. He didn’t say it to snap Steve’s last restraint, or make him shake with blind rage, but that’s the effect it has. 

It’s true, what Steve told James Barnes in the bathroom that day, that he’s not in the habit of throwing the first punch. But there’s a first time for everything.

Rumlow’s still laughing with Rollins when Steve launches himself, shoulder first, into his ribs. He staggers forward.

“Woah, what the fuck?”

“Don’t you fucking talk to him!” Steve screams, raising his fists. “Don’t fucking talk about his parents!”

Rumlow sneers and squares up, and Steve’s shaking all over with fury. In a few minutes time, he’s gonna be black and blue. 

He just has time to throw back his shoulders and set his jaw when Rumlow shoves him up against the lockers with a huge hand to his chest. Steve starts swinging his fists, but they bounce ineffectually off Rumlow’s sold trunk. He’s dimly aware of Parker scurrying past them and sprinting off down the hall. 

“Oh hi _Steve_ ,” Rumlow says, batting Steve’s punches away with his free hand. He sounds menacing, but casual at the same time, even though Steve’s struggling as hard as he can. 

“Check it out, Rollins. S’my my friend Steve. What’s the matter, Steve?”

Steve struggles in Rumlow’s grip, wild with frustration. He kicks out with one foot, aiming for the shins. He’s hot all over, feverish with rage, on the verge of tears.

“Fucking leave him alone!” he yells, so overcome with fury that his voice squeaks. “You got no right!” 

“Oh, yeah, I remember,” taunts Rumlow. “Your mom’s real sick, right? What, you don’t have a hot aunt to take care of you? Or more like a hot uncle, in your case, huh?”

Rollins laughs a dirty laugh. “Fuckin’ cocksucker,” he mutters.

Steve takes advantage of the brief distraction to wriggle free and land a punch right on Rumlow’s cheek. 

Taken by surprise, Rumlow flinches a little. Then his expression darkens.

“Great punch, Steve,” he snarls. “You got balls, coming for me like that. Don’t he got balls, Jack?”

Rollins just laughs, apparently unsure of what he’s supposed to say. Steve sets his jaw. Inwardly, his guts start to liquefy. Rumlow doesn’t fuck around. Maybe a teacher will appear in the hall and they’ll all laugh this off.

“I am full of admiration,” Rumlow goes on, through gritted teeth. “Imma go easy on you, now I know what you can do.”

“No you’re not.”

“No, I’m not.”

He slaps lazily at Steve’s face. “What, you like getting hit?” He slaps him again, harder. It stings a little worse. He turns his head the other way, and Rumlow slaps at his other cheek. “I bet you fucking love this, huh?” 

He slaps him again. A stinging blow, hard enough to bruise. “You know? I’m getting so bored of your bullshit, Rogers.”

He grabs a fistful of Steve’s shirt and jerks him forward, then slaps him again, hard. Steve’s ears are ringing, his face is burning up. It’s a struggle not to let tears flow. His head aches and he’s dizzy. Summoning up all his strength, he drags his eyes up to lock with Rumlow’s.

“Then quit being such a fucking asshole, _Brock_ ,” he says, twisting his smarting mouth into a smirk.

Rumlow’s eyes narrow into dark slits. Steve has a strong urge to piss, but he keeps his eyes fixed on his tormentor’s, keeps that smirk on his face, and braces. 

Rumlow snarls, drawing back his fist for the killer blow.

Steve flinches.

“Прекрати. ПPEКPATИ!”

The blow never lands. Rumlow’s gone, knocked sideways. Steve blinks, still wired from the fight, and sees him stagger away. A small, black-clad redhead has her legs wrapped around his waist and she’s screaming in his ear in Russian. 

Fuck, this girl is awesome.

Steve slides down the lockers in relief and rubs at his chest, transfixed. Rumlow stumbles around like a drunk bear, trying to pry Natasha’s hands away from his eyes, but she just keeps putting them back and screaming at him. 

Eventually he slams against the locker and Natasha falls to the floor, looking up at him with exactly the level of contempt that Steve always aims for. Rumlow looks down at her scornfully.

“Crazy fuckin’ bitch,” he says. Then he throws Rollins a savage look and they walk off together, without giving Steve another look.

Once they’ve rounded the corner, Natasha grins. She leaps easily to her feet and offers Steve a hand, so he can scramble to his.

“Thanks,” he says. “That was cool.”

“I hate this kind of person,” she replies, gesturing down the hall. “It’s like… how do you call it? Bullies.”

“Yeah. Bullies,” Steve says. “I don’t like ‘em either.”

*

That night when Steve’s brushing his teeth, he glances at his face in the bathroom mirror. No black eye this time, thankfully, but his cheeks are both throbbing red and his lip is split open in a great scarlet gash. A new bruise is starting to form along his battered cheekbone, in hues of yellowish-purple. It’s a riot of colour, basically.

He finds a little freestanding mirror and brings it into the living room. Under the single drop bulb the colours look even more dramatic. 

It’s years since Steve’s tried painting himself, and he’s a lot better at it now. Fucking Rumlow. Imagine if that guy actually helped Steve get his scholarship. That would be a laugh and a half.

_“I bet you fucking love this, huh?”_

First Barnes, now Rumlow. They’re not _right_ , exactly – Steve’s no masochist – but they’re not completely wrong.

He takes a brushful of red and adds some navy blue to make dark purple for the hollow of his cheek.

Does he like it? Now he’s started being honest with himself, he can’t stop. Of course he doesn’t enjoy the pain, or the abject fear. But he has to admit there is a certain thrill of excitement he gets when facing down a bully like Rumlow. He’s completely in the moment, not thinking about school, or cancer, or money, or even about James Barnes. It’s just him against the bad guys.

His brush dabs away at the skin under the eyes of the Steve in the painting. Are those dark circles always there? Damn, he needs to get more _sleep_.

Some pure white, now, to accent his lip, where it’s swollen and shiny. People are gonna notice this at school tomorrow. It’s like his outsides match his insides, now, and everyone can see how trampled he’s gotten.

Time to work on the eyes. He mixes a dirty shade of blue, then reaches for a hint of green.

*

The next time Steve sees James Barnes it’s from a distance, and Barnes is holding hands with Paige, which is so gross Steve is forced to pretend it didn’t happen.

*  
The next time they’re in close proximity is when Steve is late for English class, so he spends nearly an hour staring at the back of Barnes’s head and noticing the way his hair starts to curl when it gets long, then imagining him with different types of hairstyle. Then Barnes rushes off at the end and there’s not really a chance to say hi.

*

The time after that, they’re passing each other in the hall. Barnes is trailing along with a group of sports dudes and Steve’s alone, as usual. Rumlow sneers and Steve tries to look unimpressed, then his eyes search out Barnes, who glances at him, tight-lipped. It could just about be a smile, Steve thinks. Maybe.

So that’s how it is. Of course it is. What, did Steve think they would suddenly become best buddies, and that he’d be welcomed into Rumlow’s circle of goons?

Of course he didn’t. 

Still.

*

Paint what you feel, Erskine said. So Steve lets himself feel.

October’s running out already. Burying his head isn’t going to change anything. His mom might not make it, but then again, she might. 

The next evening he’s confronted with a pile of dishes he’s been ignoring for days. But instead of filling the sink with soapy water right away, he sets up his painting things in the kitchen and paints the dirty dishes, in their haphazard pile, under the yellowish kitchen light, with the dark window beyond.

And that’s how he goes on. He arranges the bottles of anti-nausea meds and vitamin supplements like a still life, scattering the colourful pills in little piles in front of them, and paints that. He paints the bags of kale, the dried lentils, and the candy bar he picks up on the days his mom says “fuck it.” He fills canvasses with renderings of the casseroles brought over by kindly neighbours, and their matching cups of ginger tea, where he’s taken to drinking it with her. He fills pages with quick sketches of peoples’ hands, the way they wring them in their laps when they come to visit. And eventually, he starts to paint his mom again.

He starts by painting her on the bench out in the park, her head wrapped in a silk scarf, on one of her better days. The sparkle in her eye comes and goes these days, but as it’s there, Steve captures it. He tells her when he’s working on her smile, so she can put it on for real. She asks to look at the picture and says that it’s wonderful, which is when he tells her, on impulse, about what Mr Erskine said. About art school and stuff. And instead of pursing her lips and pointing out the drawbacks, she says you’ve only got one life, and you have to follow your heart.

Then he paints her on bad days, when she doesn’t move far from the couch, when she has to really push herself to eat the small plates he brings her, and everything about her is a little duller. He’s not sure if she’ll agree to be painted with her head all bare and fuzzy, like the skin of a peach, but she does, and she says talk to me, Steve, how’s school? So that’s when he tells her about Rumlow grabbing girls’ asses in the hall, and catcalling Jang-Mi Samagwi, who’s a _freshman_ , for God’s sake, in really disgusting terms that liken her to a Thai sex worker, making her cry. Like, she’s not even Thai, she’s _Korean_. And Sarah stares at him appalled, like she can’t believe what the world is coming to. And then she says, well, I hate to see you get hurt my precious baby, but I didn’t raise you to let that kind of talk go. You just make sure you keep getting up. And Steve smirks at her and says, I always do, ma.

She lets him paint her on hospital days, when her skin takes on a greenish-grey tinge, and her face takes on a zen-like calm which is _not_ something Sarah Rogers has ever been known for. He can’t really bring his paints in, so he uses charcoal instead. Between sketches he passes her a plastic cup of water, and asks her what she thinks about while she’s sitting there hooked up to the machine. And she looks at him for a long time, and he stops painting and holds her gaze, unflinching, until she says, the only thing I can think about is how I don’t want to leave you. And then she asks him what he thinks about, and he says, that I’m afraid of being alone. 

And then takes a deep breath and says, the other thing I think is that I don’t want you to die before I’ve gotten up the nerve to tell you I’m gay. And she smiles like her heart is melting, and bites her lip and says, oh Steve, first of all, I’m NOT going to die. And second of all, why would you be frightened to tell me that, baby, and he says, I dunno, I didn’t want to disappoint you by becoming a cliché. And she says what do you mean? And he says, well, I’m in love with the fucking school quarterback. 

It’s hardly the funniest joke ever cracked, but she laughs a dry, hacking laugh, and Steve joins in, and that’s how they find a way to cry together for the first time in forever, under the cover of laughter.


	4. Chapter 4

November kicks in, and Steve’s understanding of football does not improve, even though he keeps skulking along to every home game. He doesn’t really have anywhere to be during lunch or after school most days, so he usually heads to the art room to work on his portfolio. There’s this kid called Malcolm who hangs out there a lot, too, but mostly no-one bothers them there.

Until one rainy lunchtime when James Barnes stops by.

Steve’s just going to get some clean water when he looks up and sees Barnes hovering in the doorway. His stomach swoops, stopping him in his tracks.

“Hey,” Barnes says.

Steve blinks at him, flummoxed. Which Barnes is this? The guilt-driven caretaker from the bathroom? The friendly guy from the grocery store? The virtual stranger from the hall?

“I was just walking past and I thought I saw you in here,” Barnes says. “Is this a good time? Could I… check out your stuff, maybe?”

Right. The art enthusiast. 

Well, this is weird. Steve is thrown right off his balance. Hardly anybody’s really looked at his artwork in years: Erskine, his mom, maybe Malcolm a time or two. It feels like Barnes has asked to examine his intestines, or the workings of his aorta.

“OK,” he says.

“Cool.” Barnes smiles. He strolls into the room and stands there, awkwardly, peering at the pieces on the wall. Thank God Malcolm’s not around today.

“Um. Most of it’s in here,” Steve mumbles, gesturing at the cabinet where students store their finished work.

He finds the drawer labelled with his own name and pulls it open, leaving Barnes to lift out the sheaf of paintings and look carefully through them. Steve’s filled with a nervous kind of hope, but he’s not sure what he’s hoping for – just, maybe, a sign that Barnes _gets_ it? That there’s a common thread between the two of them, and not just a lame one-way obsession? 

The first picture on the pile is the one of the dirty dishes. Steve steals glances at Barnes’s face while he looks down at the paintings, watching as he arches his eyebrows and then settles them into an interested frown. His expressions are fascinating. There are SO many photos of him up on Facebook, just _sitting_ there, and it’s not Steve’s fault that Barnes keeps his profile wide open. Anyway, he definitely only uses the photos for art references.

Because that’s not creepy at all.

“Wow,” Barnes says. “You’re really good. I wish I could paint like this.”

“Thanks! Thank you. I mean, I guess I’ve been working at it a lot. So.” 

Next in the pile is one of the abstract pieces. Barnes gazes at it, then up at Steve, then back at the painting again.

“You… do much digital stuff?” he asks.

“Not really,” Steve replies, combing his hair to one side with his fingers. “It’s not where I’m at right now.”

Christ, how pompous do you wanna sound, Rogers?

“Right,” Barnes says, smiling. “It’s cool that you keep it old school. I like that.”

Steve swallows, but nods his appreciation. Barnes flicks through two more paintings. He looks for a long time at the one of the pills, and one of Sarah lying in bed, smiling a defiant smile. 

“Steve,” he says. “Is this…?”

“It’s my apartment, mainly.” Steve replies, hastily.

There it is: a chance to explain, and test the limits of this strange, tentative friendship. But the seconds tick by, and the moment passes. Steve lets the awkward silence stretch between them.

“Thanks,” says Barnes, placing the paintings carefully back in the drawer. “That was really cool.”

Steve doesn’t answer, just does this stupid half smile and an all-purpose shrug.

“Ok, so, I gotta….” Barnes picks up his bag and turns to go. 

No. Wait. This isn’t right. Steve breaks out in cold panic. He has to say something. Anything.

“My mom’s sick,” he blurts.

Ugh. 

The words sound so horrible out loud – in fact, Steve’s not sure he’s ever actually said them before. Weird how Barnes keeps causing him to drop truth bombs all over the place.

His arms fold defensively across his chest, just like they did that time in the bathroom when he basically admitted he was gay. When Barnes turns to look right at him, he’s not sure where to put his eyes. It would suck to see pity written across that perfect face.

“I thought… I was gonna ask,” Barnes says.

Steve nods.

“Sorry, man. Is it bad?”

Is it bad. It occurs to Steve that he’s never really thought about it in terms of good or bad, it just _is_. But now he thinks about it, yeah, of course it’s bad.

“Fifty-fifty,” he says, looking at the floor.

“God. That sucks.”

“Yeah. It’s just the two of us. So.”

Steve crumples down into an empty chair behind him. Barnes walks over and perches on a nearby desk, which is both exactly what Steve wants and kinda terrifying. He keeps his eyes down.

“So what’s she like?” Barnes says.

“Who, my mom?” 

Nobody has asked Steve this before. Usually it’s ‘How are you holding up?’ or ‘What do the doctors say?’ or his personal favourite, accompanied by an uninvited hand on his knee or his upper arm, ‘Everything happens for a reason, you know.’ 

But Barnes looks sincere enough, and once Steve starts to answer, he can’t stop himself.

“She’s awesome,” he says. “She’s actually pretty funny, for a mom? She’s always kind to everybody? She loves old 80s movies and all that kinda crap.” 

He pauses, letting himself smile. “She’s brave as fuck, I’m telling you. I feel like it’s only now I’m starting to appreciate her as a person, you know? Instead of just, like, my mom.”

Barnes is smiling, too, in silent encouragement.

“So, I dunno. She raised me on her own. I was sick all the time as a kid? But she’s, like, a nurse? And now... We kind of live at the hospital, pretty much. But she was always so… optimistic, you know? Like, now that she’s tired all the time, it makes me realise how fucking positive she always was. Even when things got rough.”

Shit. Steve can hear his voice start to wobble.

“I just think she’s really, really strong.” 

He stops there, before he totally embarrasses himself.

“Wow, she sounds cool,” says Barnes, gently. “You guys are pretty similar, huh?”

Steve nods, rubbing at his nose. Why is Barnes so amazing? He doesn’t say ‘I’m sure she’ll get better soon,’ or ‘My aunt got sick and she’s doing great now,’ or make any mention of God. Instead he says, “My mom’s on her own, too.”

That stops Steve from snivelling.

“Yeah?” he says.

“Yeah. With four of us. Can you imagine?”

Steve puffs out his cheeks and shakes his head.

“Where’s your…?”

“My dad’s been gone a few years. Good fucking riddance.”

That sounds tough. Steve doesn’t remember his own dad, but at least people talk about him warmly. 

“He not so great?”

“He’s, ah. Kinda like our friend Rumlow.”

God. Steve can’t think of anything worse.

“What, a violent homophobe?”

“Pretty much.”

Barnes sounds neutral enough, but something about the way he’s talking reminds Steve of the tone he usually uses himself, when he’s forced to talk about the situation with his mom. The careful blankness that hides an emotional shitshow.

“Oh. I’m sorry,” he replies. “That’s fucked.”

“Yeah.” Barnes kicks at the leg of a nearby chair. “So. That’s why… I mean, it kinda freaked me out that time. You know. When Rumlow went for you?” 

“Oh. _Shit_.”

Steve had assumed Barnes was good with bruises because of sports, but… fuck. Maybe not. 

The thought makes Steve’s chest swell with compassion. But there’s also this asshole part of him that’s actually kind of happy to hear that things aren’t so perfect for Barnes, after all. It brings him closer, almost within reach. 

Steve hopes he’s coming across as supportive.

“I feel real shitty about it,” Barnes says.

“It’s OK,” Steve says. “I get it. It wasn’t your fault.”

“I shoulda done something,” Barnes persists. “I won’t let it happen again, OK?”

“Hey, I can take it,” Steve retorts, because even James Barnes, handsome and vulnerable and open as he is right now, can’t make him swallow his pride.

“I know,” smiles Barnes. “But you really shouldn’t have to.”

The look in his clear blue eyes makes Steve feel like he’s stuck his fingers in a wall socket. He can’t be making this up, can he? He could swear that he and Barnes are having what you might call a ‘moment’.

Shit, what if Barnes has picked up on his little crush. It must be so pathetically obvious. The guy must be so used to having people make heart eyes at him.

I could kiss you right now, Steve thinks. I bet you’d be nice about it too. Laugh it off. Probably never talk to me again, though.

“That’s cool, man. I appreciate it,” he says.

“Sure.”

They’re smiling at each other when the bell rings for the end of lunch, and once again, the moment’s over. Steve’s already wondering if there will ever be another one. Hell, he’ll go find Brock Rumlow and insult him to his face if getting punched means he gets to talk to Barnes again. 

He stands there, still clutching his dirty water jar, while Barnes shoulders his backpack and heads for the hall.

Just before leaving, he stops and turns.

“Hey, are you gonna be at Sharon’s party this weekend?”

The idea that he might be invited to a cheerleader’s house party is so absurd that Steve laughs out loud.

“Yeah, right,” he says.

“You should come. It’s gonna be fun.”

With mild amusement, Steve pictures himself brooding and scowling in the corner while the popular kids get wasted and make out and dance to terrible music.

“Sure,” he says. “Sharon would love that.”

Barnes shrugs and throws him this adorable aw-shucks smile, before disappearing off to class.

*

You should come? YOU SHOULD COME???

What the fuck was that? Was that an invite? Did James Barnes invite him to hang out? Like he wants to be _friends?_

In _public?_

God. Like, obviously Barnes is gonna be with Paige the whole time, and he’d probably ignore Steve completely, even if he turned up. But it’s so awesome that he asked. 

Steve sails through the weekend on a wave of productivity. He has no idea whether James Barnes knows anything about art, but the fact that he liked Steve’s stuff – admired it, even, has given him a huge boost. And that’s not all. Steve keeps coming back to the fact that they’d _talked_. Really talked, both of them, about their families and real stuff. Barnes was so great when Steve just went ahead and barfed up the story about his mom. 

The days disappear in a blur of domestic tasks and endless painting. On Sunday evening Sarah comes into the living room to watch old movies, and Steve can’t keep the dorky smile off his face. Does this have anything to do with the quarterback guy? she wonders, and Steve says God, mom! And then he says, look, it might, but I’m REALLY not gonna tell you about it, so she smiles to herself and puts on St Elmo’s Fire.

*

“Why are you smiling?” Natasha asks. “You don’t usually look like that.”

Steve jerks out of his reverie. A whole weekend might have passed, but he still can’t stop thinking about James Barnes’s little visit to the art room. Trust Nat to get in his face about it. She has taken to appearing next to him in French class and speaking too loudly.

“Nothing. I’ll tell you later.”

“A boy?” she smirks.

Steve blushes from his hairline to his chest. “Shut up!” he hisses. “Someone’ll hear you!”

Natasha smiles smugly and opens her notebook.

At the end of class she follows him out into the noisy hallway and taps him on the shoulder.

“So?”

Steve’s instinct is not to talk about it. It’s embarrassing, and a little scary. But Natasha seems eccentric and foreign enough to trust, and Steve _has_ been going a kinda nuts trying to keep it all to himself.

“James Barnes looked at my paintings,” he whispers.

Ugh, it sounds so dumb. He glances at Natasha, expecting to see disdain or amusement on her face, but instead she looks genuinely happy.

“What did he think of them?” 

Why does she have to be so damn loud?

“He said they were _good_ ,” Steve says, still a little bit in awe. “And we talked, and I ended up telling him all this personal stuff, which is like, the _second_ time I have done that to him, when I hardly even _know_ the guy, and—“

“Great news,” Natasha cuts in. “So are you going to ask him for a date?” 

“No fucking way, are you insane?”

“I am Russian,” Natasha says, looking at him as though _he_ is the crazy one.

“I can’t ask James Barnes out on a date,” Steve explains, patiently. “He is popular and cool, and I am a ‘nerd’.”

Natasha frowns, uncomprehending.

“I am not in his league? I am not… as cool as him?”

She shakes her head, looking even more baffled.

“And also, crucially, he’s... not like me. He has a girlfriend.”

For some reason, that elicits a knowing smile from Natasha. “You mean the cheerleader? Paige?”

“Yu-huh.”

“HA.”

What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Does dating work differently in Russia? Does high school? It’s kind of sweet that Natasha seems to think he has a chance with Barnes, but in the real world, the reasons why he doesn’t are endless.

He holds the door to the quad for her to walk through. At least they’re outside now, where people are less likely to listen in.

“Look, it’s not a simple thing, alright? I haven’t… most people here don’t even know that I’m gay.”

Natasha stops walking and turns to him, frowning.

“Why it’s a secret? You think you are the only one?”

“I dunno, Nat, it’s kinda private,” he says. 

Her question makes him uneasy, though. What’s the real reason why he hasn’t he been more open about it? That he’s only fairly recently been sure? That he’s not ready to give the world yet another reason to shit on him? That he finds it so hard to imagine any kind of romantic reciprocity from anyone, be they male, female or other, that he almost feels like it’s not worth it?

“I thought that it was fine to be gay in America?” Natasha goes on, a little put out, as if she will soon be seeking a refund for her Lonely Planet guide to New York.

“Well, _yeah_ , but…”

“Then why are you hiding?”

OK, this is getting a little pushy now. Steve’s about to get all indignant with her when her face softens a little.

“Do you know what it is like in my country?” she asks.

Oh shit. Yeah. Steve does know a little about it. 

“The government and most of our society hates gay people,” she says. “It is horrible. A lot of homophobic abuse. People still get murdered because of being gay.”

“God. That’s _awful_ ,” Steve says.

“Yes. They set up dates with a phone app, and when you get there, they attack you. With dogs. And they lie to you about HIV, and now we have an epidemic.”

Steve doesn’t answer straight away. This stuff is pretty shocking, but it’s not like he didn’t know anything about it – it’s more that it’s never really occurred to him to feel a common identity with people in a situation like Natasha described. High school may be shitty, but he always figured that his time would come once he’d left it all behind.

He imagines a little guy like him trying to navigate any kind of romantic life in Moscow. Shit. Russian Steve probably came out loudly at the age of 12 and has been making provocative art about it ever since.

“It’s not like that here,” he says, faintly.

“Luckily no,” she replies. “But… that doesn’t mean there is no room for improvement.”

Steve looks at her, with her arms folded across the chest of her black leather jacket, and is surprised to note for the first time that she’s actually no taller than he is. Her eyebrows are arched and there’s a glint in her eye, like a challenge. His skin starts to prickle again, just like it did earlier in the semester, when Erskine spoke to him about applying for art school. 

Is it possible he’s been so focused on his own issues, and his own art, that he’s missed an opportunity right in front of his face to do something positive? To make that impact he’s always talking about?

And, honestly, what’s he got to lose? He’s already a social reject with a seriously ill mother who gets beaten up and called a fag. The guy he’s been crushing on already knows about his sexuality, and doesn’t seem to be too uncomfortable with it. What, exactly, is holding him back, here? 

“You’re right,” he says. “You’re right. Time to come out.”

“Good,” she says. “And then, you can ask James Barnes if he will model for you.”

Steve laughs. “Hey. Don’t push it.”

“Naked,” she adds, deadpan. 

“Oh my _God_ , Natasha!”

Steve socks her in the arm and she bursts into delighted cackles.


	5. Chapter 5

Steve’s got a plan, and now all he wants to do is execute it. He leaves school in buzz of nervous energy, rushing home to make the next day come quicker. The only thing distracting him from his mission is that he can’t stop picturing James Barnes naked, which is completely Natasha’s fault and otherwise would not be happening.

He’s just starting to think he should perhaps feel a little guilty about mentally undressing his kind-of-almost-friend AGAIN, when he turns a corner and Barnes himself is _right there_ , strolling along, all fully-clothed and oblivious. Steve’s so freaked out that he trips over his slightly-too-big shoes and faceplants, right on the sidewalk. 

Wow, good one, Steve. Smooth.

He hits the concrete with an ‘oof’ and a whump of schools books, so subtlety is not an option. Steve looks up to find Barnes above him, like a benevolent shadow against the bright white sky, bending down and reaching out towards him. It happens in slow motion, like a surreal echo of their first meeting – Barnes all handsome and charming and concerned, and Steve a crumpled disaster with grazed palms and a bruised knee.

“Hey! You alright?”

Oh God, he’s smiling.

“Yeah. Fine. thank you.” Steve dusts himself off while Barnes helpfully picks up a book and a couple of pencils that flew out of his bag. With any luck he’ll think Steve’s blushing because of wiping out in public, and not because he was JUST having extremely impure thoughts.

For the life of him Steve cannot think of a single normal sentence. Mercifully Barnes chips in with some small talk, which is only a little stilted, and it turns out the Barnes family lives just a few streets away from Steve and his mom. It can be hard to concentrate at home, Barnes explains, which is why he’s heading to the library, and wow, the _library?_ Does Steve seriously find this _hot?_

And as if that wasn’t disarming enough, then he goes ahead and asks after Steve’s mom, because of course he’s thoughtful as well as handsome and nothing in this life is remotely fair. There’s actually not much to tell right now – treatment’s finished, so they just have to wait and see if it’s worked or not. So Barnes is like, fingers crossed, and Steve is just… Yeah.

The conversation tails off, Steve still casting around for something cool to say, but Barnes doesn’t make a move to leave. He sticks his hands in his pockets and kicks at a pile of yellow leaves on the sidewalk.

“So… you didn’t show up,” he says, after a while.

“To what?”

“Sharon’s thing.”

“Oh. Right,” Steve replies, as if he’s been thinking about anything else but that random last-minute invite all weekend. “You were serious.”

“Well, yeah,” Barnes says, as if that should be completely obvious. 

“Was it good?”

“Eh, you know. The usual.”

Steve doesn’t really know, but whatever. Barnes looks pretty unexcited about it.

“So I didn’t miss much,” Steve smiles. Barnes opens his mouth for a moment, then shrugs his shoulders. “I guess not.”

It’s not easy, keeping up a conversation with James Barnes while imagining him as an artist’s model in a life drawing class, but eventually Steve’s brain unfreezes enough for him to remember the thing he’s been meaning to say.

“Look, man,” he says. “I just wanted to thank you.”

He’s met with a hollow-sounding scoff.

“It’s OK. It’s just a party.”

“No, no… I mean for letting me offload on you about my mom. And, y’know…” he scratches the back of his neck. “About the whole gay thing. I don’t know why I keep doing that to you. I’m such a dick.”

“Oh.” Barnes shakes his head. “God. No. You’re not a dick. It’s cool.”

“I mean, I don’t know why I keep telling you stuff like that.”

“Yeah, but, y’know. I said about my dad and shit. So.”

That’s right, he did. And for some reason he’s still standing out here on the street, happy to go along with Steve’s awkward chatter. The realisation makes Steve a little bolder.

“So… now we’re, like, two-to-one,” he says.

“Whaddya mean?” A curious smile plays on Barnes’s lips.

“I mean like, you owe me one. You gotta tell _me_ something.”

Barnes laughs nervously. “I dunno, Steve. I gotta get to the library.”

“Hey, I’ll walk with you! You’ll pass my place, anyway.”

Barnes rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling with it. “Fine,” he says.

They fall into step together, bumping arms occasionally in comfortable silence. When Steve looks over at Barnes he’s chewing on his lip and his brow is creased. It’s a good few minutes before he finally murmurs, “My family calls me Bucky.”

Steve stops in his track, his mouth hanging open, eyes wide.

“Are you serious?”

“Don’t laugh!” Barnes grins, pinkening slightly. “It’s from my middle name. Which is Buchanan. Oh c’mon, you know how fucked up families are.”

“Bucky Barnes! It sounds like a cartoon rabbit!”

“Jesus! Steve! I’m trusting you with my greatest secrets here!” Barnes turns away in mock offence and starts walking again, with Steve trotting along behind him. 

“I’m sorry, _Bucky_. I just think it’s cute.”

In return Steve tells ‘Bucky’ about the dumb indoor sparklers his mom STILL buys on his birthday, even though he hasn’t actually been sick on 4 July for four years now, and far too soon, they reach Steve’s corner. 

“So, this is me,” he says, stopping reluctantly outside the entrance to his building.

“OK,” Barnes smiles. “See you around.”

It’s getting really cold in New York now that they’re well into November, and Barnes keeps his hands shoved in his pockets. The tip of his nose is glowing a shade of pink Steve definitely knows how to mix, and his wind-blown hair has this amazing texture, the kind of thing Steve would love to try and capture with his brush. 

Haven’t they been getting on great today? It makes Steve feel impulsive. And Natasha’s words are still niggling at him like a dare. 

Fuck you, Natasha. Do or die.

“Hey, Barnes, can I ask you something?”

“Well, I already told you my secret nickname, isn’t that enough?”

“Oh, no, it’s not… it’s just… OK so, for college, I have to do a certain number of paintings from life. Which means, you know, not photos.”

Barnes nods, slow and attentive. 

“So what I’m saying is… would you sit for me sometime?”

Barnes squints at him, then looks away. “What, you wanna do, like, a painting of me?”

“Um, yeah. Yeah, I do.”

There’s a little pause, during which Barnes chews on his thumbnail and glances down at his sneakers, and Steve starts to think of ways to backtrack, just in case.

“Well, like, when?” Barnes says.

A small firework goes off in Steve’s chest, but he does his best to act casual. “Uh, lunchtime one day?” he says. “I can get into the art room.”

Barnes nods. “Okay, well, next coupla weeks are kinda out for me ‘cos of football. But I could do it, like, right after Thanksgiving? That Thursday maybe?”

“Cool. That’d be great, yeah.”

“OK, I’ll see you then.”

“See you then.”

Barnes slouches off down the street, Steve glancing at him every so often while he fumbles in his bag for his key. His hands are trembling so much it takes him a few tries to get the door open, but then he leaps up the stairs like his feet are on springs.

His mom’s not up when he bursts into the apartment, but her light is on, so he goes straight into her room without knocking. She looks up from her book grins.

“What are you being so loud about, honey?”

Steve doesn’t even try to tone down his excitement this time.

“I just walked home with James Barnes, and I’m gonna paint him!”

She gives a delighted little chuckle, a pinkish glow on the apples of her cheeks. It’s one of those moments that makes Steve wish he could pause time and just stay there, in light-heartedness and the joy of possibility.

“I’m very happy for you,” she says. 

“Do you want some tea?” Steve asks, rubbing his chilly hands together.

“I’ll tell you what,” she replies, putting her book down and sitting up. “Do we have any soup?”

*

Steve doesn’t have to wait long to execute his plan. He’s on his way to the art room the next morning when he spots the familiar puffed-up outline of Brock Rumlow coming towards him along the crowded hall. His adrenaline level spikes, but it’s more than the usual rage and fear – there’s a wild undercurrent of excitement, too.

Rumlow actually seems a little lacklustre, as if hatefully abusing classmates is an onerous burden he’s forced to carry. But he doesn’t let Steve down.

“Fag!” he spits, as he passes. 

It’s the opening Steve needed. He tenses and clenches one hand into a fist by his side.

“Yes!” he yells, to Rumlow’s back. “You’re right! I am a fag.”

He’s not quite prepared for how it feels to say it - a taunt, and a cheer, and a battle cry all at the same time. Rumlow looks back and frowns. A few other students stop to watch.

“So what? Is there something wrong with that?” 

There are a few gasps and giggles, but Steve barely hears them. His heart is racing. Rumlow looks murderous and shifts to threatening posture, and for a second Steve thinks he’s about to catch another beating, but he feels six feet tall right now and doesn’t give a shit.

Then Erskine steps out of the art room door with his arms folded, and Rumlow skulks off. Steve stands and watches.

“Homophobe!” he yells, at Rumlow’s receding form. 

The news travels fast, and next period Natasha is waiting for him with a proud smile and a dorky high five, which he returns enthusiastically. Not much really changes after that, except that Steve feels like he’s grown a good couple of inches overnight. He hears a few whispers of “gay” around him, but they’re mostly benign, and a lot more smiles than jeers are thrown his way around school. Steve’s back straightens. He spends 23 dollars on this cool black shirt with a pride flag panel on the chest and wears it for three days straight.

“C-cool move, man,” says Malcolm, who, like, hardly ever talks, giving him a thumbs up.

*

A week later, when he’s sitting alone in the lunch room, a figure holding a tray enters his periphery and hovers there. He has to do a double take when he sees that it’s Sharon Carter, one of Paige Lorraine’s gang of polished blondes.

“Hey, can I sit?” she asks.

Probably a prank, but fuck it. “If your social clout can stand it,” he says.

She rolls her eyes and sits down opposite him. She’s really pretty, Steve notes, but not in a boring way. Her long hair has this cute curl to it, which must have taken her ages to do, but there’s this steely look in her eye, like there’s something going on behind the scenes. Steve has absolutely no idea what she might want with him, but he braces himself to be mocked just in case.

“So how’re you doing?” she asks, like they’ve ever spoken before.

“Um, pretty good, thanks,” Steve blinks. She sticks her fork into her salad and frowns at it.

“I heard you. Came out,” she says. 

Oh. That. “Uh, yeah.”

“In pretty dramatic style.”

Steve blushes a little, but can’t help smirking at her. “That’s me,” he says.

“Congratulations.”

Her smile looks sincere, not mean and bitchy. It’s possible she’s just being genuinely nice.

“Thanks?” he replies.

She chews thoughtfully on a piece of cucumber. “Does it feel good?” she asks.

Does it feel good to be out, she must mean. Steve thinks about it for a moment. There was always a certain amount of giggling and name-calling around him, so he can’t pretend things have gotten any worse for him socially, and actually, being upfront and open feels infinitely better than living with a secret. Like, he’s actually surprised by how relieving it is, especially having his mom’s support. He used to be afraid of giving up the option to retreat to the closet again, but now he can’t imagine wanting that. 

“Yeah,” he replies, with a similarly genuine smile. “Real good.”

Sharon nods, as if that was the answer she was looking for. “I’m gonna do it,” she says.

Steve’s eyebrows arch. “So you’re…?” 

“Mm hmm.”

“Sweet,” is all Steve can say. “You, um, think Paige is gonna be cool with it?”

Sharon shrugs her shoulders. “If she’s not, fuck her.”

Steve splutters a laugh and nearly spits out his French fry, more with amusement than with shock. They both glance over to the table where Paige is sitting with some other ponytailed girl named Popper or Pippa or something. Steve raises a hand and waggles his fingers, testing the water, and Paige waves back excitedly, with a huge wink.

“Huh. Looks like she’s down with you,” Sharon says. “She’s actually nicer than you might assume. I think it’s gonna be cool.” 

Steve turns that one over. This is… weird, being smiled upon by the popular kids. There must be a catch.

“Cool,” he deadpans to Sharon. “There’s two of us now. Is that enough for a club?”

A third tray lands on the table to Steve’s right, and a Russian accent announces, “I will join.”

“I was kidding,” Steve says. “Um, Sharon? This is Natasha Romanov? From Volgograd?”

Sharon beams and extends her hand. “Hi Natasha, I’m gay.”

Nat grasps the proffered hand and holds it, arching an interested eyebrow. Sharon’s grin widens even further.

“Nat! Are you into…?” Steve asks.

Nat shrugs. “I do what I want,” she says, still looking at Sharon.

Steve glances between them for a long minute, then clears his throat.

“Yes,” says Natasha. “The club.”

“Great idea,” Sharon smiles, mainly at Nat. “I’ll do the organising. Steve, you be President.”

Shit, they actually sound like they might be serious about this. “Ha, President of the gay club. Cool,” Steve says, scoffing another French fry.

“Actually, gender and sexuality alliance,” Natasha says.

Well, when you put it like _that_ … 

A switch flips in Steve’s head and suddenly he sees it. There’s nothing like that at school right now. No real voice for non-straight kids. There must be almost a thousand students at Chester Phillips, so there’s no way the three of them are the only ones. How many others are feeling as alone and ignored as he was? 

Once again, Steve starts to bristle with determination.

“We need an advisor,” he hears Sharon say. “Which teachers are cool?”

“Erskine will do it.” 

Steve’s sure he will. After all, it was him who prodded Steve onto this path of authenticity and action. 

“I’ll go talk to him right now.”

*

The resources available online are amazing. Steve’s excitement grows the more he reads. Even if nobody else shows up to their club at first, there’s still so much Steve, Sharon and Nat can do to start raising awareness and create opportunities for gay kids, or anyone who doesn’t fit the straight-cis mould.

The hair on the back of Steve’s neck stands up. It suddenly feels like so much time’s been wasted. Enough of private angst, or looking to strangers online to share your struggles: this is a chance to change things in the real world. A stand against systemic oppression. It’s the cause Steve’s been jonesing for.

First things first, though. Every school club needs a cool poster, so Steve turns his attention to making one for the first meeting of the Gender and Sexuality Alliance. Rainbow background, obviously, with two hands forming a heart shape. Nice.

He overlays it with lettering:

CPH GENDER AND SEXUALITY ALLIANCE

• All identities welcome  
• No pressure to disclose  
• We have food

PRESIDENT: Steve Rogers  
VICE PRESIDENT: Sharon Carter

Then he incorporates some comic-style POW! balloons which say: Take action! Support each other! Talk safely! Make friends!

He texts Sharon: When do you wanna do GSA mtg?

Her reply arrives within three minutes. Next week, Tuesday! Why hang around? Let’s do this! X

*

“Ambitious, Natasha. You realise it’s probably just gonna be the three of us?”

Steve eyes the food table, which Nat has filled with what looks like easily enough snacks for 15 people. There’s a huge pile of sandwiches, bowls of nuts and chips, apples and bananas, vegan cupcakes and packets of rainbow-coloured candy.

“Nonsense. I believe in you, Steven.” She straightens up and folds her arms. “There!”

“Looks great. Thank you.” He turns away from the table and starts pacing.

“Steve, relax,” says Sharon. “It’s only our first meeting.” 

Steve sighs and sits himself on Erskine’s desk at the front of the art room. The clock on the opposite wall ticks over to 3.15, but nobody appears. Steve lets out a breath.

At 3.17, though, there’s a knock at the door. Peter Parker pops his head around it and nearly bolts when he sees he’s the first to arrive, but Natasha leaps over a desk and pulls him into the room. He waves a cautious ‘hi’ to Steve, then heads straight for the food table and starts munching on an apple.

After that there’s a trickle, then a stream. A girl with pink semi-shaved hair strides in, exclaiming “FINALLY!”, while others look nervy, or quickly identify themselves as allies. Little Jang-Mi Samagwi shows up alone, and Paige Lorraine breezes in with two of her squad, saying they’ve come to support Sharon. Bruce Banner, the brainiac, shuffles over to the back of the room, wearing what looks like his granddad’s corduroy jacket and some wonky glasses, and close behind, to Steve’s delight, is an incredibly hot, muscular, long-haired track and field athlete named Thor. Imagine getting a sports dude along to your first GSA meeting! By the time they close the door the room is full, with at least 30 people, and the snack table is almost empty.

The volume of conversation grows from quiet introductions to an excited hubbub. People actually come up and shake Steve’s hand. Natasha pours cokes while Sharon mingles, turning occasionally to throw Steve an excited smile. At 3.30, she gestures as if to offer him the floor.

“Okay,” he says, half to the room, half to the wall. Nobody really hears, because they’re too busy talking to each other. Steve looks up at them. It’s quite a sight: Paige deep in conversation with Parker, discussing gymnastics by the looks of things. Thor beaming down at the pink-haired girl, who is pretty much half his height. Wow, he thinks. This is happening.

“OKAY,” he says again. This time his voice sounds completely different. The room quietens down instantly, and all eyes turn to him.

“I’m Steve,” he says. 

Paige and her friends whoop, and someone else whistles, and then they’re fucking _applauding._ Steve claps them back, a little embarrassed.

“Thanks. Thank you for that. Wow.” He says, as the applause dies away. “It’s really awesome to see all of you here today. Okay, so, Sharon and I have some ideas for what we think this club could be like, but the first thing to say is, what do all of YOU want out of it?”

The response is instant.

“Pronouns and bathrooms, _please!”_ someone yells.

“I think we need _way_ more inclusive sex ed. Or at least, a place to talk about sex that’s not just boy-girl,” says the pink-haired girl, to various hums of agreement.

“Fuck Brock Rumlow!” says somebody who may be Bruce Banner, drawing laughter cheers.

“Okay, okay,” says Steve, picking up a marker. “Any fucking has to be loving and consensual.”

He turns to the board and starts on the list.

*

The meeting ends up overrunning by a half hour. After the initial burst of energy, the atmosphere relaxes a little, and one or two people start to talk.

It’s a strange thing for Steve, having so many of his own experiences reflected by a whole room full of people. The shoulder checks in the hall, the constant, tiring insults and casual homophobia, the fear of exposure, and violence. One kid is terrified of their family’s reaction. Another is finding it hard enough to work things out for themselves, without having to deal with anybody else’s opinion. 

The more he hears, the more Steve’s rage smoulders. But it doesn’t feel raw and chaotic like before. This time the anger makes sense. It’s something he can use. By the time things draw to a close he’s so fired up he’s ready to march straight to Principal Fury’s office the very next morning, though Erskine and Sharon talk him out of it in favour of a slightly more strategic approach.

It’s fine, though. He can wait. He just can’t believe a school club has got him this excited. That evening, just as he’s finishing the dishes, his phone pings with a message from Sharon. Steve swipes his thumb and brings up a photo she had Erskine take of the inaugural meeting of the GSA. The caption reads: Nice job, Captain! Followed by a fist bump emoji.

Steve gazes down at the photo, a slow smile spreading across his face. He emails it to himself and brings it up on the laptop for a better view. Some of the people in it he only met for the first time today, but he feels a loyalty to them all that borders on sappy.

He picks up a pencil and starts to sketch the outlines of some of the GSA founder members. Then he reaches for his brushes.

It takes him several evenings to get it right. Continuing the comic book theme of the meeting poster, he imagines everybody in heroic alter-ego form. Nat and Sharon appear as kickass henchwomen, both in tight black outfits and combat poses. He paints Bruce Banner without his glasses and old-man attire, but shirtless and totally stacked. Thor gets a flowing cape. Parker gets classic superhero red and blue, and Jang-Mi he paints as an otherworldly alien with antennae and hidden magical powers. He puts himself front and centre, in an exaggeratedly heroic pose, holding up a shield before the whole team emblazoned with the letters ‘GSA’.

At the bottom he paints a banner that reads: GENDER & SEXUALITY AVENGERS.


	6. Chapter 6

The following week is Thanksgiving. Steve’s aunt in Boston invited them like every year, but Sarah can’t travel, and she doesn’t want to go over to the well-meaning neighbours, so it’s just the two of them. Steve gets a small chicken instead of a turkey and does a pretty good job of roasting it. He mashes up some potatoes and boils some green beans and corn. The cranberry sauce is from a jar, of course, but he manages a decent gravy.

Sarah ties her favourite brightly-coloured scarf around her head and opens a bottle of her favourite red wine and they eat it on the couch, because they can do whatever they want. She raises her glass to Steve and says she’s deeply thankful for everything about him, except his awful taste in music, and he replies that he’s thankful for everything she’s given him, except for the terrible home haircuts and that one red thrift store shirt that hung around his knees like a dress and made everybody call him Lisa fucking Simpson. And she smiles and says, I gave you those awful haircuts to build your character, and he thinks about it and says, damn, mom, you’re right.

Then there’s a lull in the conversation and Steve’s mind wanders on to future Thanksgivings and the possibility of spending it by himself, and he starts to worry again that he’s not doing enough to make their time together count. The weight in his stomach eclipses his appetite for pumpkin pie so he puts it down and he asks Sarah if she’s OK being stuck in the apartment with him on Thanksgiving, and she beams at him and says there isn’t anywhere in the world she’d rather be, and that makes him feel a lot better.

She eats everything on her plate, which makes Steve happy, and insists on doing the dishes after, so he sketches her from behind while she does it and tells her all about the GSA. She’s kinda tearful with pride and it makes Steve want to get tearful too, so he changes the subject and tells her that he has friends, now, which is a little weird but mostly cool. Instead of being a ticket to permanent social exile, like he always thought, coming out at school has been his way into a whole new social life. He tells her about Natasha, and Sharon, and how he and Malcolm talk more, now, and get this – he’s even on speaking terms with the head cheerleader. 

Sarah acts like that is the most impressive thing she has ever heard, so Steve says yeah, she’s pretty nice, and doesn’t admit that part of him secretly hates her for dating Bucky.

*

_Bucky_. It started as a private joke with himself, but it’s accidentally become a habit for Steve to think of James Barnes by his family nickname. It doesn’t even sound weird in his head any more, probably because he thinks about it so fucking much.

In the average school day, they barely get the chance to say more than a quick ‘hi’ to each other, but now it’s Thursday after Thanksgiving, and Bucky is coming to the art room to be painted. Steve spends the whole morning panicking about what he’s going to talk about, it’s almost lunch by the time it occurs to him to worry about pulling off a good enough job that Bucky… that _Barnes_ will be impressed.

He’s way too wired to eat anything, so he just heads straight to the art room to set up. There’s a moveable screen in there with various drapes for backdrops. Plain or patterned? Barnes would look great against anything. Should he try to set up some lighting, or make do with the school strip lights? He won’t be able to make much progress in a single lunchtime, but he can try to work real quick, and take some photos to finish off. Or, you, know, ask him to come back. Maybe. 

Steve’s still obsessing over the fall of the backdrop when there’s a brief knock at the door behind him. He turns to see Barnes slide around the door, wearing a lopsided grin and an outfit that brings Steve’s speeding train of thought screeching to a halt. That hooded varsity jacket in red and white, those dark Superdry jeans that wrap so nonchalantly around his thighs and honestly, make his ass look fantastic.

“Hi,” he says.

Steve’s first attempt at a reply comes out as a weird noise.

“… You made it!” he squeaks.

“Sure!” Barnes grins, dropping his backpack onto a chair. “Wow, is that—” he gestures to the backdrop and chair Steve has set up in front of his easel in front of the backdrop and a chair.

“Um, yeah, I thought… could you sit here?”

Steve busies himself arranging Barnes in the chair and explaining the process. Hands in your lap, like that. Be cool if you could try to keep position, but it’s not like you can’t breathe or anything. Barnes laughs, a little nervously. I’m gonna stare at you a lot, OK? Steve says, like he’s not delighted to have a good excuse for gawping. 

To start with he poses Barnes looking off to the side, in part-profile, but when he goes over to the canvas, he realises that’s the coward’s way out.

“Hey, uh, actually, could you look at me? Face on?”

Barnes shifts on the chair and blinks up at Steve. When their eyes meet, Steve feels it in his gut. He swallows hard. Those eyes are so… _blue_. Suddenly he’s very aware that it’s just the two of them, without even any music to lighten things up.

Yikes, this might be intense. But he can’t really chicken out now.

It stays quiet for the first few minutes, but at least Steve can hide behind the canvas while he works on the outlines. He has a head start from having drawn this face a hundred times before, but it’s a whole different thing painting the real deal. His hand trembles around the brush. Good thing his style’s not too precise.

“This is weird,” Barnes says.

Steve laughs, breathlessly. “Yeah, I guess you don’t know what I’m doing over here. It could be _awful_.”

“Rogers, is this painting awful?”

“Nah. It’s gonna be, like, a masterpiece.”

“OK, cool.” A smile plays at the corners of Barnes’s mouth. 

Look at that. Such a natural connection. If Barnes was gay, surely they’d be destined to be together. He imagines the session drawing to a close and Barnes coming over to look at the canvas, finding the painting so honest and profound that it moves him to tears. “Steve,” whispers Barnes, in a voice thick with emotion, “You’re the only one who sees me as I really am.” He clutches at Steve’s hand, and then they stare deep into each other’s eyes, and then…

“Hey, d’you catch the Giants game this weekend?” Barnes asks. “ _God_ , Manning sucks this year.”

Steve pauses, his brush hovering in front of the canvas. Sure, he could try to bluff his way through this, or make up a reason why he missed it, but… that’s not who he is now. No more bullshit.

“You know what,” he says. “I don’t really know anything about football.”

Barnes squints at him, puzzled, and Steve answers with an apologetic shrug. “To be honest, I don’t even like it that much.”

“But… you come see us play, right?”

“Yeah. It’s, uh. It’s kinda… more about the players? For me?”

Comprehension dawns bright red across Barnes’s face. 

“Oh my God,” he groans. “Oh my GOD. You have a thing for…?”

“Kinda, yeah.” Steve gives a guilty smirk. He glances again at Bucky’s face and can’t help laughing, which is actually a good thing because Bucky laughs too, burying his face in his hands and peeping at Steve through his fingers.

“So, yeah, I’m trying this new honesty thing…” Steve says. Bucky laughs again. “No, it’s good. You should. People should… do that. God.”

He settles back in his chair but the laughter still lingers in the curl of his lips, and all the tension has evaporated out of the room. Steve takes a long look, enjoying the freedom to truly take him in. There are some blemishes on his face that could be pimples or could be shaving rash, but honestly, they just make him more real instead of mythical. And his ears are such a cute shape, fuck. 

How is Steve ever going to pull this off? How could he have ever thought he could do justice to such perfection?

“How’s your mom?” Barnes asks, moving his face as little as possible.

On the other hand, who cares if the painting sucks? It’ll be worth it for the process alone.

“Good, actually,” Steve says. “Real optimistic this week, which is great. She made us watch this old movie, the Outsiders? I think she knew I would share her appreciation of the young Rob Lowe.”

Bucky smiles at that. “Y’know, I would argue he’s actually hotter now.”

Caught by surprise, Steve crows with laughter. There is something so adorable about straight men who are secure enough to admit their man-crushes. This is awesome.

“You make a good point, _Bucky_ ,” he grins. “Can I call you Bucky?”

“Hmm, maybe,” Barnes grins back. “Only in private though.” He looks over and gives Steve a roguish wink, which he feels in all sorts of inappropriate places. Shit, he is in serious danger of losing his focus, here.

Finish the base for the skin, that’s right. And the shape of the shadow on the neck. Outline the hair. God. How do hands work again?

Barnes resumes the pose, but he seems more relaxed, now. His eyes are a little more hooded, his mouth turned up. Behind his canvas, Steve can’t ever remember being this elated. Having the chance to paint Barnes for his college application is wonderful enough, but even better is his growing sense that he and Barnes are actual friends now. He’s always known his dumb romantic dreams about the guy weren’t likely to come true, but this warmth, this shared humour and openness they’ve found, is a pretty great consolation.

“Your mom sounds cool, though,” Barnes says. “It’s awesome that you’re having so much quality time with her.”

Quality time. Steve turns that phrase over in his head. For some reason it really gets to him. Usually he thinks about the time he has with his mom as precious and fleeting, something to grab hold of tightly and dig in his heels. But maybe that’s a waste of energy. Barnes is right. It would be better to appreciate the mundane stuff. The everyday back-and-forth. Their shared sense of humour.

He paints some narrow strokes of texture into the front of Barnes’s hair, where he’s clearly slathered it in product of some kind. “I guess it’s not really like that for you, with such a big family and whatnot.”

Barnes exhales and shakes his head.

“You the oldest?”

“Yup. Three little sisters.”

“Woah. Man of the house, huh?”

Barnes answers with a thin-lipped smile. “That’s what my mom’s always saying,” he says. “It can be… a lot.”  
Steve’s not sure how to answer that, and then he gets absorbed with the basic contours of Barnes’s face and forgets to try. He’s so well-proportioned and his skin glows with health, but there’s a weariness to his brow, a shadow under his eyes that Steve’s never noticed before. A dent between his eyebrows.

“So,” Barnes says. “I heard about your club.” 

“Oh yeah?” Steve mumbles, through the brush clamped between his teeth.

“Yeah, it sounds cool.”

Pride swells in Steve’s chest. “It was awesome, actually. Paige was there. She tell you?”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “’Course she was. That girl has to be into _everything_.”

“Oh!” Steve peeps around the canvas. “Trouble in paradise?”

“Huh?” Barnes frowns at him. “Oh! Oh, no, we’re not, like, _together_.”

“Oh. OK.” 

There’s no reason why this should make Steve as happy as it does. It’s not like it affects his prospects any. Still, he has to duck behind the canvas to hide his grin. 

“So. Yeah. I woulda come along but I had practice.”

“Shame. We need more sports allies,” Steve answers, pausing to concentrate on the line of Barnes’s nose. “This guy Thor was there?”

Bucky’s eyes go wide as saucers. “THOR was there?”

Before Steve can find out what that reaction means, the classroom door swings open behind him.

“Hi, Ste—” says Malcolm.

“Hi,” Barnes grins.

“Um, hi, B-Barnes,” Malcolm replies, looking a little stunned. He comes up behind Steve and looks at the canvas.

“Looking good?” asks Barnes. 

“S’ _awesome_ ,” Malcolm says, as if he’s looking at the Sistine Chapel ceiling. “Hey, d’you mind if I…?” he waves a hand at the art supplies. Steve sincerely wishes he would go and draw anywhere in the world but here.

“Sure, go ahead,” he says.

“Cool. Thanks man,” Malcolm says. He shuffles over to the other side of the room and starts digging around in the charcoal.

Barnes flashes Steve a smile like an in-joke, and Steve smiles back. “I don’t think he knows a lot about football, either,” he whispers.

*

Steve makes a decent start, but there’s a way to go, so Barnes has to come back the next week, and again the week after that. By then Steve has made enough progress that he can finish off the portrait at home. Asking for any more of Barnes’s time feels weird. And anyway, the image of his face is pretty much burned into Steve’s consciousness. 

The sittings get more relaxed each time. Barnes is all excited one day because things are looking pretty good with Columbia, and Steve’s really happy for him, and says, well I’m hoping this painting will be my ticket to studying art somewhere in New York, and Barnes says wow, yeah, that would be so cool, and rests his chin on his fist and pulls a stupid blue steel face as if to help make the painting even better.

There are moments when Steve fears his work is completely terrible, but mostly he’s excited about how it’s shaping up. When he stands back and looks, he sees an expression that defies easy interpretation. Barnes’s eyes are kind, but questioning. His naturally upturned mouth could show amusement or resignation. If Steve had to describe it, he’d say Barnes looks like he wants something.

Poor guy’s probably been sitting still for too long.

Behind the canvas, he daubs colour onto Barnes’s cheek and imagines how soft the real thing would feel under his thumb. He stares at Barnes’s lips for an unprofessional amount of time and spends just as long trying to get them perfect. What a cliché, lusting after his model like this. Barnes must have an idea by now about how Steve feels, but if he does, he’s been nothing but cool about it.

Maybe he’s flattered. Steve imagines it must be pretty nice to have so many admirers.

They’ve spent three lunchtimes together and the painting’s in good shape when Steve finally lets Barnes take a look at it. Unfortunately it doesn’t quite trigger a spontaneous gay revelation, but Barnes does stay quiet for a while, and seems genuinely impressed.

“Woah,” he says. “You’re so good, Steve. This makes me look _way_ better than I do in real life.”

Your face makes my painting look better than it is, Steve thinks.

“Well, you know,” he says. “Gotta sex it up for the college profs.”

The bell rings to signal the next period, and their odd little bubble bursts again. Barnes loiters while Steve packs away the paints and carefully stows his canvas in the rack. They walk out into the public space of the hall together, which they haven’t really done before, and Steve wonders if this signals a new friendship level.

“So where’re you heading now?” Steve asks.

“Gym. Training. Hey, you wanna come watch?”

He gives Steve a suspicious side-eye, which makes him start laughing again. 

“Hey, Barnes!”

Steve freezes. Beside him, Barnes does the same.

“The hell you doin’ with that faggot?”

The voice echoes maliciously down the hall. Barnes doesn’t move. From somewhere behind them, Rumlow’s footsteps approach.

“I’m talkin’ to you. The fuck, man? We got practice.”

This isn’t going to get ugly, Steve thinks. There’s no way Barnes will let it. He turns around, and Barnes slowly follows suit. Rumlow’s walking murderously toward them.

“The fuck is this! What, you guys are buddies now? You’re _pals?”_

“Jeez, Rumlow, wouldja—” Barnes starts, lamely.

“I’m a fan, actually,” Steve interjects. He can see the whites of Rumlow’s eyes. “I love hot sports guys.” 

It’s almost like steam blows out of Rumlow’s ears as he approaches, still staring at Steve. “So. You a faggot too now, Barnes?”

Barnes opens his mouth to say something, but Steve speaks first. “Why are you so obsessed with my sexuality, Rumlow?”

He’s almost reached them now.

“I mean, if this is your way of trying to get me to blow you…”

Steve could swear he sees the veins on Rumlow’s neck pop as he clenches both fists. Any minute now Barnes is gonna laugh at him, or say something smooth to diffuse all this. But when he glances over Barnes is just standing there, pale and jumpy, looking back and forth along the hall. 

Panic flashes down Steve’s spine. Not because of Rumlow. Rumlow can do what he likes. But surely Barnes isn’t just gonna—

Shit. Steve’s boldness evaporates as Rumlow’s face turns venomous. He walks right up to Steve and towers over him, forcing him to look up if he doesn’t want to lose face.

Then he draws his head back and makes a really disgusting noise. Steve realises a split second too late what he’s about to do.

He snaps his eyes shut.

A glob of something viscous and gross lands right on the side of his nose and slowly begins to slide down his cheek. Christ, he can practically _hear_ Barnes wincing. 

Queasy with revulsion, he raises his sleeve to his face and wipes it. When he opens his eyes, Rumlow is just standing there, sneering at him. Then Barnes grabs him by the arm and pulls him away.

And Steve stares after them, his heart withering in his chest.

The whole thing happened so fast. Barnes glances briefly back over his shoulder to mouth “Sorry,” but it’s too little, too late. He was _right there_ , and he didn’t… 

God, he feels so stupid. Why would Barnes ever take his side when it came to Rumlow? Steve doesn’t even blame him. 

He turns to walk away on heavy legs. Rumlow’s voice follows him down the hall: “You’re dead, Rogers! Next time, you’re fucking DEAD!”

*

The humiliation sits in Steve’s stomach like a dull ache. 

Maybe he’s got it out of proportion. It’s not like Barnes knew what was gonna happen. It’s not like he let Rumlow throw a punch, or anything. But his inaction hurts Steve far worse than anything Rumlow could ever do. And the reason for _that_ , Steve realises is that he had convinced himself that he and Barnes were more than they really were – that he was somehow significant in Barnes’s life. That there was a bond, or something. 

God, how pathetic. Barnes is probably friendly to everyone. Steve’s just so socially awkward that he doesn’t know how to read a situation.

Steve tries to sketch his way out of his malaise, but he doesn’t want to draw Barnes right now, or even think about him, really. Instead he focuses his emotional energy on the _real_ villain.

Steve used to have nightmares sometimes about Brock Rumlow’s face. It would rush towards him out of nowhere, twisted up in anger, and he’d always wake up on high alert and count his breaths until he calmed down. But now he thinks there’s something kind of hilarious about those beady eyes and grinding teeth. He pictures Rumlow’s apoplectic fury when Steve started talking about hot sports boys, and starts to smile.

While Sarah watches Pretty in Pink, Steve doodles a little on the pad on his knee. Slowly, the face on the page begins to morph into a cartoon of the brutish linebacker.

Rumlow’s name came up again and again at the GSA. Steve knows he’s not the only one to suffer abuse and even violence at his hands. Any challenge to Rumlow isn’t just about him – it’s for everyone who’s ever been ground under the heel of that asshole. It’s no use moping over James Barnes when he could be taking a stand. 

He scales up to sketch pad and markers, and within a week he has a full A4-sized caricature of Rumlow in a red and white snap suit, clinging to Uncle Alex’s leg. With one onesie-covered foot he’s kicking some poor student in the butt, and with one of his hands he’s pointing at a lamp-post, from which dangles a pair of loudly branded sneakers. Tears fly out of his eyes into two puddles on the floor, and he’s sucking on a pacifier.

Steve stares down at the finished cartoon. The likeness is actually pretty good, but he’s added Rumlow’s football shirt number to the front of the onesie in case there’s any doubt who the giant baby is. Then, in the space at the bottom-right corner, he scrawls a decisive ‘SGR’.

*

The hall is blocked with an excited mob of students gathered around the sports pinboard, all waving their phones in the air. Steve skirts around them unnoticed and grins to himself. He should probably try to lay low today, but he’s not gonna.

By lunchtime he’s being congratulated everywhere he goes. In the first period after lunch, he gets called to the Principal’s office.

Whatever. Fury can do his worst.

“Mr Rogers.” Principal Fury leans forward and clasps his hands on his heavy wooden desk, next to a familiar-looking piece of A4 paper. He fixes Steve with his good eye. “Is there anything you’d like to tell me?”

Steve looks him right in the eye. “I drew a cartoon of Brock Rumlow as a crybaby, and posted it up on the sports pinboard, sir.”

Fury stares at him for a long minute, not blinking, for what seems like several minutes, until Steve _almost_ starts to question whether he should have been so upfront.

“I _know_ you know that harassment and intimidation of other students is expressly against our disciplinary code,” says Fury, without blinking once. 

Steve rolls his eyes. “Tell that to Coach Pierce’s nephew,” he says.

“You have something you’d like to say about Mr Rumlow?”

Steve’s drops his gaze at that. So far so predictable, but he hasn’t thought this through. Inwardly, his pride battles with his sense of solidarity to his fellow victims.

“It’s not appropriate to take matters into your own hands,” Fury says, a fraction kinder. “If there’s more to this, you need to tell me.”

Steve looks up at him again. “You wanna know about bullying in this school,” he says, “come down to the GSA.”

Fury sits back in his chair and folds his arms, contemplating Steve. “Alright, Rogers,” he says, finally. “We’ll look into it.”

With a nod, Steve stands up to leave. 

“Not so fast,” says Fury, holding up the cartoon. “Detention after school today.”

Only one day of detention? Sweet. “Yes sir,” he says. Fury dismisses him with a nod.

*

Steve’s been avoiding the kitchen calendar, but that doesn’t change what it says. Saturday, December 12. They have to go in to the hospital for scans, and a week or so after that, they’ll know, one way or another. Just in time for Christmas, for crying out loud. Some of the signs have been encouraging, but nobody will ever really commit to an opinion, because false hope is worse than never having any at all.

But they don’t have to leave until 11, so there’s time to kill. Sarah’s reading a book, doing her damndest to project an air of calm for his sake, but Steve can see right through her because he would do exactly the same in her shoes. He handles his own rising worry by finding something to focus on.

His portfolio’s almost done. Erskine spent a long time looking through the ‘mom’ series, full of praise for the composition and the evolution of Steve’s own style, as well as the emotional impact. When he reached the portrait of James Barnes, he gave Steve a knowing look which warmed his cheeks and said something about inspiration. Ugh, whatever. Erskine is delighted, thank God.

He used the school camera to photograph his best pieces, and soon he’ll upload them onto the slideroom sites of various New York schools along with the statement that will help to decide his fate for the next four years. It feels kind of vulnerable, sending pictures of them off to total strangers like that, but hey, that’s the life of an artist.

Steve imagines all the other budding artists across the country, pinning their hopes on getting onto a good course, and wishes that college application was the biggest thing on his mind right now, instead of actual life or death. 

But he can’t change the facts, so he focuses on something he can do: his statement.

Steve looks back over the paintings he’s chosen. He’s submitting three of the abstracts, calling one ‘climate’, another ‘bullies’, and a third, ‘frailty’. The whole numbered series of drawings and paintings entitled ‘mom / cancer’. The Gender & Sexuality Avengers. The self-portrait in the mirror. The quarterback. All of it goes in.

_While I’m excited about trying more contemporary approaches,_ he writes, _I think there’s more room than ever for traditional art forms to have an impact. Authenticity is my goal, and nothing can achieve that as well as raw materials and bare hands._

_Things change fast_ , he goes on, _and so does my perspective on them. But I delight in taking my time, developing my own distinct brushwork, and in making something that demands a pause for thought in a world of short attention spans. This year I’ve found myself wanting to hold onto every mundane moment, give it permanence and meaning, so painting has been a way to do that._

Steve almost wants to laugh at himself. Jesus, this is so self-indulgent. But then again, it’s a fucking art school application.

_Thematically,_ he continues, _I’m interested in the relationship between the personal and the universal. I’ve been experimenting with figurative and abstract forms to express what I’m feeling. I want my work to be honest, because for me, one of the most important things art can do is say, ‘you’re not alone’._

He stops for a moment and thinks. Then he taps out a couple more paragraphs.

_But that honesty has also been important for me personally. Making honest art has helped me come to terms with my sexuality, with family illness, and my abiding anger at the injustices around me._

_So I suppose I’m using art as a form of resistance. Looking at my portfolio, I can see now that I’ve been fighting all along, against oppression, rejection, powerlessness, illness, fear, even time itself. And in doing that, I’ve learned to look deeper and see beauty everywhere._

_So I think that’s what I want to do. I want to keep resisting, I want to reach people and build community. I want to be a better painter and explore new forms. If INSTITUTION NAME will give me a chance, I’ll never stop striving to go further. But even if it doesn’t take me to college, the process of making this portfolio has still been hugely valuable to me._

He looks at the clock. That’s enough for now. More bullshitting later.

“You ready, mom?” he calls out.

“No, but let’s do it,” she answers.

A rush of anxiety makes Steve feel woozy, so he sits for a moment and takes a few breaths. Maybe, one day, all of this will be over, and he’ll be at art school in New York, and James Barnes will be at Columbia, and they’ll cross paths in some student dive, and they’ll laugh about the petty bullshit of high school, and then they’ll finally get to be real friends.

And in this perfect future he’ll introduce Barnes to his mom one day, because she’s going to be there, too.

Please let her be there too.


	7. Chapter 7

On results day they take a taxi to the hospital, because fuck everything.

Sarah squeezes Steve’s hand and makes a brave attempt at a reassuring smile. Steve can tell she’s just as ready to throw up as he is. Whatever happens, she says out of the corner of her mouth, we’re getting Chinese takeout after this.

After this? Steve doesn’t think he’s really thought that far ahead. He tries to swallow but his mouth is too dry, and his throat’s not working properly. Hey, Sarah says, in a voice that makes him look at her. Whatever happens today, I’m never gonna give up, OK? And he says, yeah, I know.

The pull up to the hospital, the same one where Sarah works. She lets Steve open the door for her, and he lets her walk up to the oncology ward without offering her his arm, because she’s in that kind of a mood. The wait is mercifully brief, and then they’re called in to the doctor’s office. She smiles as she greets them, but there’s a professional blankness to it that gives nothing away. 

When they’re sitting down, she brings up a series of scan images which Steve doesn’t really want to look at, because he never understands those things. Then she fixes them with that fake-looking smile. I’ll get right to it then, she says. Steve feels like he’s somewhere else, watching all of this on TV. The doctor’s voice sounds as though it’s on a delay. The treatment has been effective, she says, with that same plastic smile, and we have found no evidence of cancer. 

Steve and Sarah exchange a glance. No evidence? What the fuck does that mean? Is there a ‘…but’ coming? The doc doesn’t sound very decisive. Sarah’s hand shakes as she reaches for the paperwork the doctor is holding out. You’re gonna have to spell it out for me, doc, Steve is about to ask, when he hears the doctor say, congratulations Mrs Rogers. You’re in full remission. We’re moving to a monitoring phase.

Remission. 

Remission! Steve stares at his mother, who’s staring at the doctor, then the sheaf of paper. She lets it drop onto the desk in front of her, then her face falls into her hands, and her shoulders begin to heave. And Steve half-collapses onto her, clutches her head with his arm, and cries with her, and James Barnes and Brock Rumlow and art school and the GSA might as well be in another universe, for all they matter right now. I told you, Sarah sobs, grabbing the front of his shirt with both hands. I told you. I told you. I fucking told you, Steve. And he nods, again and again, unable to speak. 

A few minutes later he loosens his hold on her head and says, in a wobbly voice, gross, ma, you’re getting snot all over my shirt, and her sobs half turn to laughter, and she says, I’ll put my snot where the hell I like, I’m in remission. And he says, cool, but the doc has a lot of tissues right there, and she says, do you want a Chinese or not?

*

It’s like being weightless, that final week of the semester. Steve floats around the school feeling slightly detached, untouchable. It’s not like things at home go magically back to the way they used to be, but now the world seems wonderful and full of possibility. He’s smiling all the time. The knot he’s been carrying around in his belly has unwound.

Rumlow seems to be leaving him alone, for once, and the GSA has another great meeting. In English class he thinks he can feel Barnes’s eyes on him, but he’s not really ready to face that situation yet – he just wants to enjoy the relief of the good news. Maybe after winter break their paths might cross again, but if he’s brutally honest with himself, they might not. 

That thought is kind of gut-wrenching so Steve tries not to dwell on it.

The last day of the semester rolls around and Steve’s looking forward to spending the holidays with his cancer-free mom, but for the first time in pretty much ever, he thinks he might actually miss his friends. As he heads into the cafeteria with Natasha and Sharon, they wave at Paige and her friends, who, Steve notes with satisfaction, no longer sit with the football guys since joining the GSA.

And then he clocks the football guys. There’s Rumlow, there’s Rollins, and opposite Rumlow, with his back to Steve, is James Barnes.

God, the familiar shape of him. Steve’s gut clenches with a sharp stab of longing. He turns his head away, not sure what to do about it all. Probably he should just let the whole thing go. It’s stupid to keep pursuing friendship with someone who’s bound to disappoint him, somehow.

Will they ever even talk again, now that the painting’s finished, and they have no reason to meet up? There’s something so tragicomic about Steve having this portrait of Barnes. He imagines finding it in the back of a closet at his apartment in Dumbo in 20 years’ time and showing it to his imaginary husband. Who is _that?_ He’s _cute,_ the husband will say. And Steve will tell him the humorous tale of nerdy high school Steve and his huge crush on the handsome popular straight quarterback, and his husband will laugh and say oh, honey, I’ve been there. What was his name? And Steve will look for a nostalgic moment and say, you know, I can’t even remember now. He got me into art school, though. And his husband will blow a kiss at the painting and say, thank you, beautiful quarterback, and then they’ll put the painting in the recycling and open a bottle of wine.

Ugh. This daydream doesn’t help at all. In fact, in makes him feel like shit.

He sighs his way through lunch, with Nat and Sharon offering gentle consolations, and afterwards the girls disappear off somewhere together. Steve’s still deep in thought as he clears away his lunch tray, when suddenly the ground lurches up to smack him in the face and his tray goes flying across the cafeteria.

Steve sprawls on the floor. Around him, people chatter excitedly. He rolls over and sits up. Oh, of course. He’s right by the table of football douchebags. Rumlow still has his foot stuck out in the aisle, and is laughing, open-mouthed, showing everyone his half-chewed lunch. 

Jesus. Steve cannot be bothered with this asshole today.

“What did you do that for?” he mutters, clambering to his feet. 

“What? I didn’t do anything.” Rumlow nudges Rollins and laughs a moronic laugh. “You should look where you’re going, FAG.”

“Oh, fuck you, Rumlow,” Steve says, wearily. He turns on his heel and heads for the door.

“You wish!” Rumlow calls out behind him.

Then, unexpectedly, there’s another voice. One that makes Steve’s stomach swoop.

“Hey, don’t talk to him like that.”

The chatter quietens down. Steve turns around to see Rumlow staring at James Barnes. He stands up, trying to intimidate his teammate, but Barnes just stands up as well, facing him across the table. The hair on the back of Steve’s neck stands up. 

“The fuck you say?” Rumlow seethes.

“I _said_ , don’t talk to him like that.” Barnes seems perfectly calm, but Steve can detect a hint of a tremor in his voice.

“I’ll talk to him however the fuck I—”

The end of Rumlow’s sentence is lost, because Barnes shoves him right in the chest and knocks him on his ass, straight over the back of his chair. He hits the ground with a loud clatter and an embarrassing yelp.

Steve’s chest lurches. The cafeteria gives a collective gasp, then silence falls. 

“Barnes, what the FUCK?” grunts Rollins.

Rumlow says nothing. He just stares up at Barnes from the canteen floor, his face twisted and frozen in shock, and Bucky just eyeballs him right back. 

It’s freaking awesome.

Steve’s mouth hangs open, his chest swelling with pride and elation. Every shred of disappointment he’s ever felt in James Barnes disappears. Did the guy really just commit social, and possibly sporting suicide, in front of everybody? For him? 

Steve feels precarious, flooded with emotion. What the hell is he supposed to do now? Go over there? Leave?

“Alright, alright.” Mr Coulson, the unfortunate lunch supervisor of the day, strides over to them, breaking the tension. “Fury’s office. Both of you.”

Rumlow starts to protest, but the drama’s over and the hubbub returns. Steve turns to make his exit, smiling to himself. He’ll have to find a way to thank Barnes later. 

He’s half way to the door when he hears Barnes’s voice again.

“Wait. Wait. Steve!”

Puzzled, he turns back to face the room. “Yeah?”

Rumlow’s up on his feet now, glowering away, but Barnes is ignoring him and looking straight at Steve. Addressing him directly, in front of a cafeteria full of people.

Steve’s heartrate accelerates. Fuck. What is this about? 

“Do you wanna hang out with me tomorrow?”

Steve blinks. Tomorrow. Tomorrow is Saturday. Is this some kind of bizarre prank? Or maybe Barnes has just confused the day, or just realised he won’t be hanging with the football bros any more and needs new friends. Whichever, Steve’s all out of energy for this semester. He just wants to go. He smiles and nods his head, like yeah, yeah, sure, then turns to the door again.

“Steve, wait.”

He freezes.

“I mean… I mean like a date.” Bucky says.

Wait, what? 

Butterflies swarm in Steve’s stomach. All around, people are murmuring Oh my God, and what the hell? Behind him he can clearly hear Rollins snickering. 

If this is a joke, it’s a fucking cruel one. But Barnes isn’t cruel. Steve falters forward towards the door, not quite willing to take the chance. 

“Steve! I’m serious!” There’s a desperate edge in Barnes’s voice now. “I wanna go on a date with you.”

“Oh my God, he’s fucking serious,” says a girl Steve recognises as Pippa, or Popper, or whatever she’s called.

“Wow, _that_ explains a lot,” says Paige Lorraine, next to her.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Steve’s heart is pounding. He takes a deep breath and turns around again, to find Barnes still standing in the same spot, looking at him with clear-eyed sincerity. The football crowd are wearing various expressions of disgust and confusion. And everybody in the place has their eyes on Steve.

He’s gonna have to talk loud, so his voice doesn’t wobble.

Steve stands as straight as he possibly can, then folds his arms and raises his chin.

“Alright, Barnes,” he says. “But you gotta wear your Superdry jeans. Your ass looks _amazing_ in them.”

Time stops for a full second.

Then the cafeteria erupts into chaos, with screams of delight and wild applause and people banging on the tables and whooping. What the fuck just happened? Is this real? Amid the noise and mayhem, Bucky’s just standing there beaming at him, and he beams back, and it’s… shit. It’s _real._

*

**EPILOGUE**

“Wow.”

Steve pauses halfway down the stack of schoolwork he’s been archiving, in an attempt to make space in his room for new college work.

“What?”

Bucky looks up from where he lies, sprawled on Steve’s single bed, playing songs off his phone.

“Just some stuff from my portfolio. It feels so long ago already.”

“Lemme see.”

Bucky swings his legs over the edge of the bed and comes up behind Steve, sliding his hands around Steve’s waist, resting his chin on Steve’s shoulder.

See, this is the exact reason why Steve can’t get anything done around here.

He leans back against the solid body behind him and drops his head to one side, so Bucky will nuzzle at his neck, insistent, until Steve drops the papers he’s holding and turns around. He slides his arms upover Bucky’s shoulders and dissolves into the kiss, one warm hand roaming under his shirt to stroke his back.

Wow. Bucky somehow kisses with his whole body. It’s been six months and it still makes Steve’s head spin every time. 

“You were saying?” Bucky grins, pulling back.

Steve narrows his eyes in mock-annoyance.

“I was just thinking,” he says, “A lot can change in six months.”

“Tell me about it,” Bucky smiles. Then he catches sight of something on the desk behind. “Hey, look. It’s me!”

He lets go of Steve’s hips and picks up the canvas with his portrait on it.

“I love this,” he says. “I mean, _look_ at me. How could you not notice how into you I was?”

“I dunno, Buck, I was mostly trying to paint you without getting a boner.”

Bucky laughs, full-throated and gleeful. “Fuckin’ pervert.”

Steve shrugs in reply, guilty as charged.

“You keeping it?”

“Of course,” Steve says. “It’s for our apartment in Dumbo.”

“ _Dumbo?_ No way.”

“Not _now_ ,” Steve replies, pinkening a little.

“Hey! I remember these!”

Bucky picks up another painting. It’s one of Steve’s abstract pieces, full of harsh chaotic lines and yawning blank spaces, with his spiky signature floating small and lonely in the middle of a white void. He runs his finger over the paintwork, peering closely, then glances up at Steve.

“Oh!” he says. “I get it.”

“You do?”

“I think so. Can I… is it OK to add something?”

Steve shrugs. “Sure. I mean, I have hundreds of those.”

Bucky picks up a pen and holds it in the air for a moment, then leans over, into the blank space, and writes a little ‘+ JBB’ right next to Steve’s initials.

It’s on the tip of Steve’s tongue to make some jibe about how cheesy that is, but he’s hit by an unexpected rush of emotion and finds he can’t say anything for a few seconds.

“Gimme that,” he says, once he finds his tongue again.

He snatches up the pen and carefully draws the outline of a heart around the two sets of initials. 

Bucky weaves his fingers through Steve’s and leans his cheek on the top of Steve’s head, while they both look at the changed painting.

“That the kind of art skills they look for at SVU?” Bucky asks.

“Hey, fuck you, at least I did something more substantial for them than throwing a dumb ball,” Steve retorts.

“Says the guy who came out every Friday night to watch me do it,” smirks Bucky. “Anyway, I threw that ball like a goddamn champ, Rogers. Columbia loved it almost as much as you did, thank God.”

Steve rolls his eyes at that, but he can’t help grinning as Bucky slides his hands around his hips and steers him toward the bed. 

“Imma shut you up right now, Bucky Barnes.”

It’s crazy how things can turn around. It turns out some people _do_ get to be happy in high school, after all – he just can’t quite believe he’s one of them.

“Bye bye, boys!” Sarah’s voice sounds from the hallway. “Be good.”

“Bye, ma!” “Bye, Sarah,” they yell in unison.

The door clicks shut behind her. 

“Yeah, sure,” Bucky says, flashing Steve a truly filthy smirk. 

Steve pushes him down onto the pillows, and kisses that smirk right off of his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew that was a bit of a whirlwind, but I finished on time! Thank you for reading, and super thanks to everyone who has commented on this, you are my BFFs now <3 <3 <3
> 
> Here's my [tumblr.](https://escapologistldn.tumblr.com/)


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